Hurricane Sandy

This time last year, Hurricane Sandy decimated the East Coast.

If you don't live in one of the areas directly impacted by the Hurricane, you might not realize that the damage still exists, and that the devastation is still heartbreaking.  Boardwalks have been repaired, and the public face of communities that draw in the tourist dollars have been spiffed up.  However, go a few blocks away, and the damage to homes and families is still phenomenal.  I was in Jersey City this summer with middle son, and I was astounded at the damage that I saw - damage that was still present, and had not yet been addressed - months after the hurricane.  But, the national news had found new things to move onto, new stories to cover, and they've left the victims alone to muddle through with whatever resources they might have.

Many people who lived farther away from the coast were prepared for the storm, with bottled water, propane tanks, generators, and canned food.

Many were not prepared.  I remember seeing stories of people who lived in lower Manhattan who had stocked their refrigerators and freezers with food to see them through the storm.  I never did find out how they fared after their power went out, but I think it's safe to assume that things didn't go as they had planned.

This leads me to a question for you:  Are you prepared?

Winter is quickly coming upon us.  In the Mid-Atlantic, winter storms throw us into a panic mode, with store shelves stripped in hours, and cars gridlocked on the road as people fight to get home.

As a family, each of our cars is equipped with the basic needs for winter:  A bag of kitty litter for traction, a snow shovel, chains for the tires, and a couple of blankets.  We also keep a big case of water, and a plastic container full of granola bars, tuna, crackers, nuts, and other things that will keep us going if we get stranded on the side of the road for any length of time.  (I grew up in the Mid-West, and winter proofing your car was something everyone did around Halloween.)

I always keep enough groceries on hand in case if we are snowed in for any length of time.  I'm currently shopping sales and clipping coupons to restock what I normally keep on hand.  I depleted our stock during the recent furloughs.  We have several hand cranked LED lanterns for light,  a couple of radios- one is hand cranked and the other is battery powered.  We also have a wood stove to keep the house warm, as well as a propane stove and a gas grill that we can use outside to cook should our power go out. 

We have been snowed in for more than a week before.  When Snowmaggedon wracked the East Coast a few years ago, we would dig out of our neighborhood just in time to get snowed in again!  Fortunately, I had made a huge COSTCO run in the week before the snow storms hit, so we were well prepared for a lengthy stay at home.

The parking lot for our grocery store got gridlocked the night before the first of the storms were to hit.  The police were called, and it took them well over 3 hours to get the lot cleared.  People were parking at the high school and walking the half mile to the grocery store, only to leave with much less than they expected.

The day before Hurricane Sandy was supposed to strike Maryland, I ran to Wal-Mart to see my friends and neighbors, and see what things went first.

I did pick up extra trash bags, and I picked up some batteries.  Somebody had moved the condoms next to the batteries, and the store manager was having a cow while I was there!  I ran into a lot of my friends, and we had a great time catching up with each other!

The funny thing I noticed was that the frozen/refrigerated foods were the first to go.

The really odd thing is that we live in a rural area.  Power always goes out here during storms. 
Why were people stocking up on refrigerated and frozen food?

In the days after the storm, people were complaining that they'd lost hundreds of dollars in frozen and refrigerated foods.  Hmmm....

We do keep a freezer, and it is filled.  A power outage does hit us hard, but when the power goes out, we treat the freezer as a giant ice chest.  It is already filled with several bottles of water that are hard frozen.  If we feel we are in danger of the power going out, we will fill our ice chests with food that we think that we are going to use, and fill it with some of the frozen water bottles.  And then, we keep the freezer closed.  We will then use the generator once every few hours to power the sump pump, the freezer, and charge our phones.  If we're going to shift anything else over to the ice chests, we will do it while the generator is running, so that the freezer can bring the temperature back down after we open it before we turn the generator off for a while.

(This requires that we keep gas cans on hand in the shed.  We do that anyway, since we have a big yard, and we use it for our lawn mower.)

In memory of everything that the good people of New Jersey and New York went through last year, ask yourself, "How prepared am I for winter?" 

If nothing else, make certain that your car is prepared for the coming winter weather!