Prepping for the hurricane

Jacob Allred
#emergency-preparedness

Hurricane Sandy is on its way. Unfortunately, I haven’t finished my 72 hour kits, so we are stuck with whatever we have on hand. Luckily, Becca and I tend to be fairly prepared anyway so hopefully we have everything we need.

Here are some of the highlights of our preparations:

Water

We have two 15 gallon water drums. To prepare for the storm, I drained and refilled them. With the potential for flooding we decided to move them into the apartment instead of leaving them in the basement until the storm has passed.

To refill them, I used a shake siphon (something like this) to drain most of the drum into a drain in the basement. These drums are really heavy when full, and I didn’t want to deal with that. Next, I tried to use the siphon to fill the drum from the sink, but the siphon moves water faster than my sink can fill. Instead I resorted to putting a rubber band on the sink sprayer thing to keep it turned on, then shoved it in the drum. It worked well enough but took forever to fill. Last, or actually about midway through, I added a tablespoon of bleach to each drum.

We also have several water filters , and we have a bunch of water bottles so hopefully we’ll just use the water from the drums for flushing the toilet (if we even have a disruption in water service).

Food

We’ve been trying to eat down our food storage (for various reasons), so we aren’t as prepared as we could be. However, we still have a stack of MREs from my 72 hour kit which should provide several days of food if needed. These things are wrapped in plastic so even if they get some storm water on them (for example, if a window breaks), they’ll be fine.

We also have a camp stove, plenty of propane, and lots of easy to heat non-perishable food. It won’t be glamorous but we’ll survive.

Lighting and communications

We have plumbers candles, flashlights, batteries, fire starters, etc.

We have a NOAA weather radio (crank, solar, and battery powered). It also has the ability to charge cell phones in case the power goes out but the towers stay up (or get repaired before the power). Becca and I are on separate cell phone carriers to increase the odds of being able to communicate.

Documents and data

We have important documents printed and laminated, or stored online. We have all our data backed up to multiple locations across the country.