*Unexpected Ice*
On a Wednesday, Earlier this Month, we got the call we'd been dreading... My Grandmother had passed away. We hurried to my Parent's house (about 15 minutes away, the way I was driving) and sat with the rest of the Family as they took my Grandmother out of the house.
On the way home, the radio said we should expect "A little Ice" that night. I've come to realize that it's almost always that "Little bit of ice" that turns into something major, so when we got home we made sure the battery banks from our Solar Alt Energy set-up were charged and that everything was ready.. I just had a feeling we were "Due" for another Ice storm.
Working on the last minute preps kept my mind off my Grandmother. I'd already called everyone that needed to be called from my parent's house, and friends and family had already begun to head toward South Carolina from many states. The day was sunny, but again, that always seems to be the case just before a storm slaps you from behind.
That afternoon the temps dropped fast, and a light rain began to fall... the rain turned to ice and, as expected, the "little bit of ice" turned into a winter storm warning with "Significant ice accumulations on trees and power lines"
Marsha3 arrived at our house about midnight, and already trees were falling. She'd had to shift her Jeep into 4 Wheel Drive already, and she had to cross people's yards, downed power lines, and crawl across fallen trees to get in.
Tree tops breaking out of HUGE trees out back sounded like machine gun fire at times, punctuated with loud crashes as the tops hit the ground. Everything in Upstate SC came to a screeching halt. Power, phones, cell towers, cable, etc, went out almost immediately when the ice began to form.
Even Before Marsha3 got here, PaleHorse and I had swapped the rest of the house to alt power. We made a mistake here, probably due to our minds being on my Grandmother, we left the outside porch lights on. This is not the smartest thing to do when the whole upstate is without power. It can act as a light house beacon to lead unprepared people to your door (we've put that on our Emergency check-list now (Duh), "Make SURE the outside lights are OFF")
Living out in the country as we do, you'd think EVERYONE would have some form of Alt power, even if it's just a simple Genset... they don't. We heard a few gensets start in the area through the night and next day, but not very many. Almost no one had power and it was cold.
At one point our neighbors were outside sitting in the car to keep warm. Yeah, I felt sorry for them, but we've talked preparedness to them several times before and just got the dull cow-eyed look.
Our Solar power with our "Outback" inverter will power the 120VAC stuff for our whole house for about 3 days, but our central Heat and our Water heater are 240VAC. We fired up the Genset from time to time to keep the water hot, and built a good fire in our wood stove... the hot air from the woodstove is blown out into the living room by built-in fans, and then circulated through the house with ceiling fans and an exhaust fan at the back of the house..
We weren't all that worried about falling trees because several Rubies had helped us fall BIG trees earlier in the summer. These big trees were too close to the house, and two had been hit by lightening and were dying. So, as I said, we'd called for a little help, and several rubies came and we took out the trees... it probably saved our house since we now have MANY trees down in our woods out back.
The Ice continued to accumulate all the next day and the state was calling for more to come.. that was, they were calling for more to come before NOAA's Broadcast tower on Paris Mountain fell.. then the weather radio was just filled with static. We turned on the Stereo and Ham radios to keep abreast of the local situation, but most commercial radio stations were knocked out also.
Thursday night found us eating Steak and Shrimp, and watching the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD (The Extended Director's Cut, the way the movies SHOULD have been shown in theaters) on our 57 inch High-Def TV. We had the blackout curtains pulled and we were warm, well fed, and entertained... From time to time we saw our neighbors going out to their car to warm up on our outside security cameras... by hitting a button on the TV's remote control, we can switch all the cameras from the smaller monitors to the high def TV set to get a closer view of what's going on outside.
Yeah, I admit that I was feeling kinda smug about this time... But it kinda upsets me now that I was this smug while (unknown to me at the time) other people were freezing to death nearby... other's were losing everything they owned in house-fires because the cat knocked a candle over, or the lantern was leaking oil, and the fire crews couldn't get to them (they DID try though)... Other's were dying because the portable heater wasn't ventilated.. Still others were dying from medical problems and couldn't get to the hospitals due to fallen trees, and no way to call for help... a LOT of people were dying around us while we watched TV with the kids... To us, this was just an exercise, but to some of those other people, it was a literal "life and death struggle", and we were so comfortable that it really didn't cross our minds how serious it really was out there...
I know none of that is my fault, let's be real, the guy that runs a Premier Survival Site lives right down the road from them.. they had years to read the FREE articles and prepare for situations like this.. so I shouldn't feel guilty about that, I know. We prepare for our family and friends, we put out FREE info on preparation for others right here, written from EXPERIENCE. They chose not to take advantage of it; they chose wrongly.
Still... take it from me folks, If you're human, it'll still hurt later when you think, "There had to be something I could have done to help those people". But that can be a dangerous mindset in a longer term disaster.. your supplies and abilities are very limited, and your first duty is to your family and friends... just know in advance, you'll carry some psychic scars after a disaster where people die near you.
Let me say that I Do feel guilty about one other thing though... My Grandmother pre-planned/pre-paid her funeral, Everything was taken care of (as you'd expect from the grandmother of a survivalist).. but during this same time period when I was feeling so smug, My Poor Mother ("Mimi" on the site), and my father, were at a funeral-home in my grandmother's home-town, in the freezing cold, after having braved 50 miles of dark, icy, roads that even the police didn't want to be on... They were shivering in the funeral home because the power was out, and the owner of the place had to keep the dead people cool, so, not having power, the funeral home owner just let the whole building cool down (and I have to agree with his logic, and decisions)...
But my poor broken-hearted, arthritic, Mother was in that dark, cold, building with a flashlight, looking for a coffin suitable for her Mother.
I'll never rid myself of that mental image.
I should have been there with them; Even though they purposefully didn't tell me they were going (yeah, we have comms), because they knew I WOULD have gotten out on those same icy roads to have been there also, come hell or high water... It may sound silly to you, but that's just the kind of people we are.
Anyway, About 9pm the Genset started sputtering as we were heating the water in the water heater.. not good. We shut it down and, standing in the rain and ice, I tore it down to get the water out of the fuel. It seems a certain child had checked the fuel in it and left the gas tank top off, and the ONE tiny leak in our tin storage shed (The black picture with the white stripe down the middle on the cameras above is the inside of the storage building, the IR lights in the building don't come on until it's dark outside) had caused some water to drip into the gas tank, who knows how many months ago.
As the Girls held flashlights and a beach umbrella, I drained the fuel, cleaned out the tank and fuel lines with our air compressor, and replaced the fuel filter (ALWAYS have spare parts and lines!).. then we refilled the Genset and fired it back up.. it ran smooth as silk from then on (It now lives in it's own dedicated Generator shed, with external mufflers and sound baffles, it's QUIET... see articles on that elsewhere here).
About midnight, I got a bit antsy and got in my 4WD truck (with Chains on ALL four tires) to go have a look around... it was a nightmare out on the road.. trees down EVERYWHERE. I crawled across many of them, or ditched the truck and bypassed them. MANY little street hugger cars were just sitting in the middle of the roads, they'd got to a fallen tree and tried to turn back, only to find out another tree had fallen behind them.. they had no choice at that point but to walk home. That's yet another reason for the Ground clearance and traction of a 4WD, and for having a winch on your vehicle and carrying a small chainsaw in the truck during storms.
The area was as black as I'd ever seen it.. I drove 15 minutes in both directions and not a single stop light had power. I carefully noted the houses in the area that had lights, these are neighbors we need to talk to in the future. I was also happy to note that one neighbor that had asked me many questions about solar power had installed a nice solar system this past Summer, and even had his Christmas lights on... not real smart to advertise this way, but he obviously felt good about having power to spare.
Friday we had a funeral to attend. All 5 of us were able to take hot Showers, and the 4 Girls used their blow dryers and other implements of hair destruction. We all piled into our Xterra and made the 40 mile journey to my Grandmother's funeral.
I was surprised at how many friends and family were there, but the preparedness gene runs in my family obviously, and we don't choose to associate with Sheeple, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. I know my parents were running their house on their generator, and everyone at the funeral was clean and well dressed. That's harder than you'd think when there's no commercial power within 80 miles in any direction.
Saturday Night the commercial grid power came back on. We noticed this because our neighbor's lights were on. We later found out they hadn't eaten in 2 days, they didn't have ANY food in the cabinets and couldn't get out to get any... Their car had run out of gas late Friday night (Another reason we never let our vehicles get below half a tank, and have fuel drums filled with stabilized fuel).
Most of the stores were closed anyway, and the few that were open on backup power weren't selling any meats (unless you were buying bulk with cash) or other cold goods, trying to keep their freezers cold... Since the Phone and cable lines were down too, they also weren't accepting debit/credit cards, it was Cash or nothing.
Some of this may sound a bit hard hearted. We were eating Steak and shrimp and watching TV in a warm house while our sheeple neighbors were hungry and shivering in their car. However, MANY of our neighbors ARE preparedness minded, and we've gone to great lengths to help these folks get prepared. Yet some people are just too unmotivated to prepare for future events. We've spent MANY Tens-Of-Thousands of dollars, and countless man-hours, on preps. We've spent MUCH time helping our preparedness minded neighbors get prepped. Since I'm an Electrical Engineer, when the neighbors have questions about generators or solar power, they tend to gravitate this way, and I'm happy to answer their questions.
If a man doesn't want to prepare for his family, that's his choice. Personally I think it's a poor choice, but some people make the conscious choice NOT to prepare, and if they don't care about their families or themselves, I'm not going to either. Sometimes an "Object lesson" will wake these people up.. sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case with that particular set of neighbors.
We depended on ourselves and did very well... they depended on the state and power company and ended up shivering and starving. Seems like a no brainer to me, but they STILL haven't done anything to prepare, and winter is just starting here.
During the ice storm, THREE houses in the immediate area burned to the ground (and many more burned down across our county alone).. all the fires were related to candles, leaky oil lamps, or propane heaters being set too close to curtains or furniture. The hospitals were filled with people that had been electrocuted, fallen on the ice, or that had cut themselves with chainsaws. These were the lucky ones that made it to a hospital (Also running on backup power)... several people had accidents and couldn't call for help, or the Paramedics couldn't get to them. Luckily PaleHorse is a paramedic, and Marsha3 is a nurse... even our teenaged children have advanced first aid training via Red Cross classes at school... but we were careful (and lucky, but I believe that a person makes their own luck most of the time) and we didn't have any injuries (We've already had our share this year ;)
As I said, preparing for an unexpected disaster is simply a no-brainer. The Hurricanes in the Southern Coastal States this year should have rammed that fact home to EVERYONE by now... Preparedness can make the difference between your family "living" well, and shivering in a car (or worse).
Warlord
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