Re: irma made it so dark
Hello...I'm back!
I'll try and keep things concise and to the point.
First off, Miami was nowhere near the disaster that Houston and parts of Texas were after Harvey. We had some flooding in the Brickell (downtown Miami) banking district due to the Miami River surging and perhaps on South Beach (always floods there), but apart from those areas, we were spared and left high and dry.
Winds were an issue and even Cat 1 (74+ mph, gusts of 100+ mph) winds can be scary and take trees/limbs down in the 10s of thousands. I'm in a 433 unit condo complex with many oak/palm type trees and we lost our share, although one could drive out of most parts of the complex, to my main street, which had some lanes blocked, here and there. I'm also on a 500 yard by 500 yard lake fed by two main canals at opposite corners, so water for toilets and even filtering was never going to be an issue, since I have quality water filters here to get potable water in the event I ran out, or the water mains ceased functioning.
That being said, I had clean drinking water the entire time, so showering and toilet flushing wasn't an issue and the sewer was never stressed.
My power did go out on Saturday, at 1:30 pm EST, well before the tropical storm winds (40 mph) started buffeting my condo. My power came back on Tuesday night at 11:30 pm EST, so 82 hours without power. For hurricane Andrew in '92, I was down for 18 hours with water and for hurricane Wilma in '05, I was out of power for only 15 hours with water, for reference.
In 2012, I put together a modest 'car camping/SHTF' kit with things like a Coleman Sundome 4 tent, a couple of warm weather sleeping bags, a minor first aid kit, Coleman propane twin mantle lantern/single burner cooking stove and a Coleman dual fuel (white gas/petrol) single burner stove and twin mantle lantern.
Other things were Swedish Trangia alcohol spirit stoves with cooking platforms, a small cookware set, ferro rod fire starters, an Estwing 16" Camper's ax, Tramontina 18" machete, paracord, 10" O2 Cool D battery/12vdc fans, 60w 12vdc solar setup with 10A digital charge controller, 14w Sunkingdom 5v USB folding solar panel and plenty of 12vdc SLA/AGM mother batteries, NiMH Eneloop type AA/AAA batteries, a boatload of li-ion cells and 12vdc/5vdc chargers, so I was good on rechargeable batteries/power.
In 2013, for Christmas, my buddy sent me a small Harbor Freight 900w two stroke Storm Cat generator, which is a sleeper genny, so I could have run my fridge on/off, if I needed to, although they're prohibited in my condo complex for obvious reasons. I did run a floor fan for 10 minutes on Friday, before the storm, just to see if it ran 4 years later and if fired right up on the third pull with 16 month old ethanol free gas, so that was nice.
I only ran it once more on Tuesday, for 3 minutes, to grind some coffee beans with my Rancilio Rocky grinder!
Just some impressions:
People either have houses on some land, in a rural setting, a house in a tight sub-division, a townhouse, condo, or apartment, so situations will be different depending on where you live and having 100 gallons of gas, 500 gallons of drinkable water, 50,000 Kw of generator power aren't always doable for some, so we play the hand that's dealt to us.
I'm on the third of three floors, without storm shutters, so my biggest concern was window and roof integrity and I was spared on both accounts. I have an ADT alarm system with 7Ah backup battery, but my phone/internet is ATT U-verse, so once the power went out, there was no phone connection and fearing power being out, I wanted to stay put and protect the bunker.
I'm in a nice neighborhood and a gun guy, so security was never an issue.
Here's the nuts and bolts of my 82 hours without power:
One mistake was that I didn't have much ice and what I did have, was gone by day two. My '94 Montero was filled on Friday, so gas wasn't an issue, should I have needed it. I had 2.5 gallons for the generator and new Stihl MS-170 chainsaw I bought the preceding Wednesday, but neither was needed, apart from the coffee beans, lol.
This place is called CandlePowerForums, not FlashlightForums, for an ironic reason--candles can be a helpful solution. I had a bunch of cheap $1 candles in clear glass cups and you'd be very surprised how well they work in a totally darkened environment. 2, 3, or 4 of them strategically spaced can really provide sufficient illumination (unless you want to read a book/magazine) for moving about and doing less detailed things. They last a very long time and are cheap, so getting 15-20 of them from the Dollar Store is a no brainer and they don't self-discharge, or go bad. I've had mine since Wilma in '05 and they did the heavy lifting.
We can have all the killer flashlights we want, but I mostly used my little AA/16340/18650 based lights, predominately on the lower settings. Moonlight modes weren't really helpful and neither were the 1000LM modes, unless I was outside looking around.
Pencil beams weren't needed and floody lights were more helpful, even when outside, in the dark, cruising around.
Food/water are always an issue and I keep canned goods around, but since it was 95*, humid and stressing, eating three squares a day wasn't that much of a priority and losing a little weight was probably a good thing. I didn't really get to my canned goods, as the two supermarkets opened on Monday and there were a couple of restaurants up and running after Sunday, when the storm passed. Most of us can stand to fast a day, or two, anyway and 82 hours wasn't a hardship.
This brings me to another issue, which should be pretty self-evident and that is CASH. Just because a place is open and you've got an American Express Platinum card, does't mean Publix, the Ale House or the gas station can accept credit cards, which many didn't, so have some cash on hand and don't make it a $100 bill--1s, 5s and 10s--maybe a couple of hundred dollars worth will get you by, even through a fortnight.
Lastly, if I had a dollar for every one of my neighbors who were starting up their cars and driving around the parking lot, charging up their cell phones on even Monday, I could buy a new monster light. It was interesting to see that even with the latest iPhone 32, or Samsung Galaxy Billion, nobody had a dinky powerbank. I charged up a couple of neighbor's phones on Tuesday, just to be helpful and one lady was watching a movie on her's and she was down to 35% even!
Also, get a good AM/FM/SW radio like my Tecsun PL-390. It's a stereo jobbie, but without power, it was welcomed entertainment, since many stations were still up and running. If you have a little battery powered set of speakers with 3.5mm input jack and something like a older iPhone/iPod/CD player, you can have some tunes, since any station still up and running will be simulcasting the TV weather crap and that gets old, fast.
I'm sure I'll add some more, but those are just some lessons that I learned. I could have held out a lot longer, since I could charge up my 12vdc mother batteries with my solar panels and keep the fans running, which made living in the heat/humidity, bearable.
Solar charging beach chain and umbrella to keep the sun off, as it's hot out there!
14w Sunkingdom folder topping off a Ruinovo 4x18650 powerbank on Tuesday morning.
Two 30w 12vdc Sopray mono panels charging a 22Ah Chrome SLA/AGM battery under the bench.
12vdc and 5v USB panels charging stuff up.
Chris
