5 Nights With No Power Across N. Alabama Due to Storm Damage

Here in north Alabama we have had power restored after approximately four and a half days without power. Power was lost around 5:30pm Wednesday and came back on about 6:30am Monday. This is the longest duration power outage that I can ever remember having, sort of our equivalent to the great north Atlantic coast blackout several years ago.

The outage was a result of the monstrous storms that swept across the southeast, one of which scored a direct hit on the main distribution center for the surrounding area, blacking out virtually all of north Alabama. Estimates were anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 people without power.

That night, after the storms had passed by and the power was out, there were many people coming and driving down the street, probably out to buy flashlights and batteries. I went outside briefly to check out the conditions around the apartment building and make sure that my car didn't have a tree on top of it or anything. This was well after sunset, and with the heavily overcast skies, there was pretty much no ambient light outside except for the occasional car passing by. It changes your thinking process a bit when you're deciding which lights to grab, because you realize that you'll be screwed if you're out there and your light fails, so reliability and backup lights become a big priority over whatever other whizbang features a light may have.

With that in mind, I grabbed my edc Quarks because unlike a shelf queen, I use them relatively frequently and keep tabs on their batteries. (a low voltage, Q3 neutral head on a 17670 battery, and a R5 123 on a Li-ion battery, both tactical versions). I also dropped in a SureFire G2 with an R5, and put my Fenix TK11-R2 in a holster on my belt.

My eyes were already fairly dark-adapted, because inside I'd been using a 2C Maglite with a Nite-Eyes dropin (the low power version) which was about 20 lumens or so. Anyway, I stepped outside and clicked on the TK11 in general (60 lumen) mode, and the result was shocking in the total darkness of the neighborhood. I have used this light before out jogging, but in those cases there were streetlights, house lights, and car headlights to contend with, so even in high mode the TK11 wasn't overwhelmingly bright or anything, but now in a situation with no other light sources, the 60 lumen mode was PLENTY.

I walked around the building for a little bit and checked for damage, but everything was in good shape luckily. The tight beam profile of the TK11 let me see easily to the tops of the surrounding trees. There were a few people with some small led and incan lights outside the other apartment buildings standing around talking, but the conversations seemed to trail off into shocked silence as I went by with my light!

Throughout the event, I was surprised by how many people I saw walking around with no flashlight at all. After the storms passed, there was dim ambient light from the sky, so you could see somewhat to just walk down the sidewalk, but not if you were under trees or in a building. Some people nearby were grilling out at night, and a bunch of them had lights. Somebody had a fairly bright led flashlight that put out a flood beam, and somebody was walking around with a 3 or 4 d cell incan, but I couldn't tell if it was a Maglite or not from where I was. Again, in total dark conditions, even a 30 or 40 lumen Maglite looks pretty bright! The incandescent beam sure looked a lot better than the ghastly blue light coming from the led flashlights that other people had. I'm guess these were the cheap 5mm led cluster variety, based on the tint and beam profile.

I didn't spend too much time outside at night because there was a curfew imposed, but I did get to try out my (relatively) new tactical Quark with the S2 emitter. I was running it off a 2AA body, programmed to medium and maximum. This time I waited a while for my eyes to fully adjust to the outside lighting conditions, and even though there was a thin overcast (no stars visible) there was still a faint glow coming from the sky. I don't know if it was light from other towns miles away or if it was moonlight behind the clouds, or what, but there was enough light you could at least walk down the street or sidewalk with no flashlight, but that's no fun! I clicked the Quark on to medium, and again it was quite impressive how bright even that light level appeared with dark-adapted eyes.

I walked around a little bit, and checked mail, and realized that using the light to read up close like that had shot my night vision, because when I looked up, the parking lot area now looked pitch black. However, a quick twist of the Quark for turbo mode took care of that problem! The XP-G based Quarks may not throw nearly as much as the older XP-E variants, but for relatively short neighborhood distances (50 yards maybe?) the light was pretty awesome: a huge, wide swath of illumination in front of me. As I walked back down the sidewalk, the beam was broad enough and bright enough to fully illuminate the apartment building across the street, its yard, and the street itself. This would make a great light for searching a neighborhood, as it can illuminate large areas at once and you can see everything there at a glance. On a side note, this S2 light does have a pretty bad yellow-green tint, but it's worse indoors than outside. While outside, I didn't really find it objectionable or really even all that noticeable.

As far as indoor lighting, I basically settled on using a 2C Mag with the previously mentioned Nite-eyes dropin. This made a good general area and walking around light. When I needed extra output, I used one (or both) of my 3D MagLeds. One of those was an old LuxIII, the other a newer Rebel version. All these lights provide long run time, and the 2C Mag setup especially. I used that light a lot for the duration of the blackout and probably still haven't even come close to using up the set of batteries in it that I started with (and they weren't fresh to begin with either). I did have to change the batteries in the 3D Rebel Mag, though, because one of the 3 cells crapped out, even though the other two were still holding up okay. These were the "Everready Gold" brand, and I've had this kind of thing happen before, where one cell just completely craters for no apparent reason. Fortunately I had enough Rayovac cells for a reload. The lesson I learned there is: if you're going to use alkalines for anything, at least get good quality alkalines!

Other than those lights, I spend a lot of time using a Quark R4 neutral on moon mode, for those times I wanted to keep my night vision in order to be able to keep an eye on what was happening outside. The moon mode was fantastic for this purpose. I highly recommend that if you don't already have one, you need a Quark or other light that has a very very low mode. It also makes an excellent night light, and each night I left it on and pointed at my bedside table so I wouldn't be completely in the dark if I had to get up at night. (Side note: Fortunately, we didn't have any security issues at my place, though some of the hard hit areas did have burglary and some looting. I kept some .357 insurance handy. However, the looting seemed to be nipped in the bud early on, when a would-be looter broke into a gas station/store at 2am, and discovered the owner was staying there overnight to guard the place. For his efforts, the looter collected three bullets in the chest and expired in the parking lot outside; score one for the good guys. The police chief's only comment was to reaffirm the citizens' right to defend their property. After this, any looting in general seemed to come to a stop for some reason!)

When all was said and done, I realized that I didn't even come anywhere close to depleting my supply of batteries. With a multi C or D cell light, running an efficient led at low power, you can have tons of runtime and not have to worry about running out. In addition to that, I also had a 4-hour charger for 2 AAs that I could've used in my car outside if I'd had the need. Basically I got through 5 nights without even touching my supply of primary batteries (aside from the one that crapped out), and didn't even deplete any of my rechargeables. 'Course, I'm content with a pretty low level of inside light (20 or 30 lumens was fine for the most part), but if you like a higher level of light than that, YMMV. Even so, I probably could've run at 100 lumen level each night, using both my rechargeable AAs and the C/D Mags, and still not had to touch the rest of my primary battery stash. So if you're worried about whether or not you have enough batteries/runtime, rest assured, even a moderate flashaholic probably has light for a continuous month, easily! Lack of food, water, and other factors will come into play long before you run out of light.

And on that note, Sub Umbra, if you're out there still, I owe you a HUGE THANK YOU for all the advice you posted on CPF after your Katrina experiences! Your real-life planning and tips on the wisdom of adequate supplies aided me a great deal. Thanks to your experiences, I've kept an extra stash of water, food, and medicine handy, and the past few days it's really paid off! I didn't have to go out and fight the panicked mobs for supplies in the aftermath of the storms, because I had everything I needed on hand. Everyone should make similar disaster preparations regardless where you live; case in point, no one realized that major damage to a single distribution center to the region would black out the ENTIRE region. I think everyone (myself included) thought there was more redundancy than that). An event that no one even thought of can come along and bite your city/region in its collective butt, and then all the set routines go to hell in a hand basket. Don't think just because it hasn't happened yet that it won't happen where you are. Keeping your cool and laying low is probably one of the best survival strategies, because the roads were swamped with people fighting for gas/food/ATM cash, etc.


To finish off this post, I'd like to post the following two quotes that came to mind during all these events:


Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness will spread over Egypt – darkness that can be felt'.

-Exodus 10:21


My grandfather... hoped that someday our cities would open up more and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be.

-Fahrenheit 451

I'm still around.

I'm glad your prepping paid off for you.

Life may be short...but it's wide. Keep prepping. Always try to give yourself as many options as possible.

Regards,
Sub

oopsy

Stress Test, I'm glad you & your family were safe during the storm. The Shoals area was lucky were I reside but there were a few power outages in nearby places. Sub Umbra's posts also helped me on the road of *self-preparation* as well.

Glad you were prepped.
Nick

Great post. Sounds like I need to go back and read Sub Umbra's posts!

Thanks!

Very detailed and well thought out post, Stress Test - thank you for sharing your experiences.

I had not thought of any kind of emergency planning, but recently we experienced a few long power outages in our village - this got me to thinking about planning for the worst case scenario and I have since started my emergency kit.

Of course during the power outages we were OK for light in my house.....

Thanks for the comments everyone!


Just an update, I finally went to the local Target down the road to restock on some things, but found out that they were still having issues with their power supply. The store had been operational since last Friday, I think, but I guess they had been running on generator power this whole time.

When I showed up, there was only minimal overhead lighting and no HVAC system running (fortunately the weather was cool this morning). All the refrigerated/frozen sections were roped off and dark, so my plans to get milk and sandwich stuff were a bust! Oh well, small problem in the scheme of things.

I was very glad I had added a little extra lumen firepower in my jacket pocket, in the form of my TK11 and SolarForce L2 with an XM-L, in addition to my small pocket lights, "just in case". I had told myself I was being silly to include that extra hardware, but when I first walked in the store and saw what was going on, I was glad I had it. Several times the full lights would come up for a second, then all the lights would flicker wildly for a few seconds before dropping back to the bare emergency minimum. I half expected the lights to go out completely at some point, but everything held up.

There were a fair number of people in the store, but everyone seemed more subdued than usual. Actually, given the low lighting, and lack of blaring radio ads and everything, this was probably my most peaceful trip to the grocery store ever!

On a side note, I swung by the flashlight and battery isle, and found that there was still a large stash of AAs, but most of the D cells were cleaned out except for a few 4-packs. I didn't see ANY C cells at all, which was strange, but I imagine the place got resupplied at some point, and maybe they didn't restock the Cs. The flashlight section was CLEANED OUT!! There were only two or three packages of the cheapo Everready 5mm, 2D cell lights, and a cheap $5 Energizer lantern (which I looked at, but it was only 20 lumens so I passed). And that was it. No Maglites in sight! Even in the camping section, all the Coleman lights and even lanterns were cleaned out, which kind of surprised me. I guess it got to the point where people were scooping up whatever they could get their hands on.

By they way, they did have several packs of Energizer CR123a batteries, at the low low price of $5.84 for a two pack! (actually I've seen them at nearly twice that price so that's not too terrible). There were also some single CR2s, at 5-something dollars EACH! Yeow. But, I would suspect that during situations like these, those two battery types would be the very last to go, if at all.


On a separate note, my brother finally got some good use out of the Mag and Minimag I gave him a couple of years back from Lowes' Black Friday sale, so that was good news! :thumbsup:

You need to buy a battery powered fan.

I work for a local utility and was assigned the task of accessment for part of a city in the Niagara area. Power had been out for about 5 days and it was just announced today that all power had been finally restored.
The devastation that I saw was unbelievable, consider we don't get too many wind storms like that. Two people died as a result, many cars including a BMW, a Porches and a couple of other high end cars (as well as regular cars) were demo'd. Many many trees crushed utility lines, cable phone front and back yard as well as power took great hits. I saw several house with crushed roofs, busted windows etc.

We all know how insurance companies like to pay out, so I can just imagine all those claims adjusters looking for excuses as to why they won't pay the claims. Typical.

The city that I inspected was only one of several cities that was hit in our area. During the actual storm I was about 50 miles further north and while I encountered heavy winds, it wasn't nearly as bad as it was towards the Niagara area. Everywhere you looked was utility trucks, police baracades and debris. I feel for those that have insuficient or no insurance.

As a coincidence last week I found myself visiting every wally world within 50 miles trying to find those HID lights that were on sale for 10 dollars. The first few stores I visited I found the flashlight section completely empty. It took me a few trips to realize this was due to the storms and power outages. What a week to pick for hunting a specific light as nearly everything was already gone. Literally every single light, lantern, and packs of batteries were gone from every wal-mart within 50 miles of my home.

I also was shocked to see that most people do not have one portable light in their home. To me this seems odd as my house has at least a hundred but most of us here are not like average people. I can clearly see that most simply do not really think that much on having no power for days as it is rare. The devastation here was incredible and I also saw it first hand. I also saw many officers who were not prepared as many of us spent several hours working over.

Most officers have enough light for their shift and many were trying to re-charge on duty and trying to find extra batteries. Again from my time here I was prepared with several back up lights as well as batteries. My main duty light uses 18650s however can also run from standard 123 cells and I have 20 Sure Fire cells in my duty bag.....along with 6 extra 18650s.

It was nice to be prepared however it was bad to see so many victims struggle with the simple things. If nothing else comes good from this maybe it will help many to be better prepared in the future. Of course it is easy for me to say that as I was not one of those victims.

Thanks to the great threads on generators, I had bought a Honda eu2000i a few years ago. I had used it once for a 6 hour power loss.

I had no damage from the tornado, however, I lost power for 2 days. With 2k power on hand, I was able to power up my television, computer and refrigerator. The first two items are fed via satellite and the TV eats 500 watts.:shakehead

I also received a shipment of CR123's and AA's a few days before, so I was good to go for flashlights and headlamps.

My hats off to CPF for helping me see the light.lovecpf

Oh, to Sub Umbra, I'm about to pull the trigger on a Big Berkey.:wave: What filters should I order with it?

Very interesting thread here.


Lots of good advice, also.

sunspot said:

...Oh, to Sub Umbra, I'm about to pull the trigger on a Big Berkey.:wave: What filters should I order with it?

Click to expand...

Sorry for the slow response.

My experience is limited to 11 years using the Katadyn Drip Filter which would appear to be quite similar to the Big Berkey.

In our water situation taste and odor is not an issue -- we are more concerned with bacteria, viri, etc. For these reasons we are able to avoid filters with charcoal and just stick with micro-pore ceramic with silver.

IIRC ceramic filters with charcoal need to be changed out about 6 times as often as the plainer ceramic ones. This makes them much more expensive and makes the logistics of the storage of spares quite a bit more challenging.

I keep spare filters and parts in an airtight box with desiccant and a humidity indicating card that may be read without opening the box.

Let me go over a couple of points that were not fully apparent to me when I started using a drip filter years ago. I could have saved quite a bit of money if I had thought of some of it sooner.

I've heard that Berkey and Katadyn both use the same filters and that they come from the same factory. The Katadyn comes with a little tapered rubber plug which they state may be used to plug one of the filter holes if a filter cracks or becomes broken for some other reason. You may pull the bad filter, plug the hole with the stopper and put your filter back into service without even buying more parts. I would be surprised if the Berkeys are not this way, too.

A few years after I bought my filter I read that if your family is smaller you may plug one or more of the holes because you'll have to swap out the filters long before the maximum flow has gone through them.

Filter life for the ceramic/silver filters is 3 years. We only run one 2.5 gallon batch through our filter every other day so we are wasting most of the filter's capacity by running with the stock 3. OK lets do the math. Each filter is rated at 13,000 gallons of low particulate water (like tap water) or 3 years use -- whichever comes first. Therefore the stock, 3 filter setup is good for 39,000 gallons!

Running one batch every other day comes to less than 500 gallons per year for our unit. A few years ago when I replaced the filters I used the plug to fill one of the holes and it worked out very well.

Since then I ordered a few 'repair kits' from Katadyn. The kits have extra filter nuts, washers and stoppers. When I rebuilt the filter last week I plugged 2 of the holes and we are now filtering all of our water with just one cartridge. I also replaced the spigot. It's really cool. With the new filter in the unit and three spares under controlled humidity we're good to go for another 12 years.

So my advice would be to give it some thought and buy some spare cartridges and other parts right from the git go. The prices seem to just keep going up each year...

One final point. I have always been concerned that the spigot on both the Katadyn and the Berkeys is very exposed. I had always planned to have the spigot hanging over the counter in use but I was afraid that one mishap could damage or even break it off. Even if I did not consider it to be a piece of emergency equipment that situation is unacceptable to me.

I built a Luan plywood base for mine that has a couple of 'ears' made of 1 by 2s that fully protect the spigot from bumps. I would advise doing the same before setting up your filter. Perhaps I may work up a pic of mine to put on-line. It was pretty straightforward.

EDIT:

Here are a couple of links to pics showing the 'base' and 'ears':

http://www.legion59.cotse.net/images/front.jpg

http://www.legion59.cotse.net/images/side_b.jpg

Glad to hear that you are alright. To be honest, the Great Blackout of 2003 wasn't a huge probllem for some of us. I was fortunate to be visiting friends in upstate NY when it hit. Power was restored just a few hours later. Other parts of the state were not so lucky.

Good old Con-Ed . . . They still have no back-up system in place, and refuse to put in any effort to prevent another one. Three major blackouts during the last several decades. No rioting during the first one.

Major rioting and looting during the one that hit in 1977. Worst blackout in NYC history . . . Until the one that hit in 2003.

I've worked inside the giant Con-Ed complex in Astoria. They still have no back-up system in place. Don't even have any contingency plan for preventing another near-nationwide blackout from happening again.

Great thread! my heart goes out to all those affected by this, but it's good to hear that OP was good to go. I've also learned a lot here, and also credit Sub Umbra's outstanding postings after Katrina with a shift in my planning. I think that thread should be a sticky for preparedness newbies... Robocop brings a very good point to light that nobody likes to talk or think about: readiness of first responders/ officers trying to keep the peace. I work for a 160+/- member local department near where I live, and the perception that everyone wearing a badge is is ready for anything can sometimes be incorrect... They're like anyone else, some are gun guys and gals, some couldn't care less. Some carry a "go-bag" and are ready for as much as possible each shift (I'm guessing Robocop is one of these.), some carry what's issued and call it a day. Not knocking in any way shape or form, just saying they represent a fair cross section of society and preparedness levels. You've got to be ready to take care of yourself and your needs, assume nobody else will I guess is my point. Our officers do their best, but if you have your stuff together , you're one less person for them to have to help if something like this happens.


EDIT- I realized after re-reading my post that I was not clear... I'm a civilian employee, not an officer. Sorry for any confusion. An outsider's perspective, but one arrived at after a bunch of years working where I do. Same dynamic when I was in the Army, some carried more than needed, some the bare minimum. I liked to be as comfortable and prepared as possible when in the field and when deployed, so I carried a heavy ruck.

Just some update info from talking to co-workers after the fact.

Several guys I know had generators, but of course, not nearly enough gas on hand to run them for very long. So, they had to go out into the madness and fight the mob for gas. One guy ended up in Tennessee somewhere before he found a gas station that was open and not cleaned out.

Another guy said that the sound of the generator running in his backyard at night apparently attracted unwanted attention, because in the middle of the night he heard someone jumping his chain link fence. He went outside with a spotlight of some sort (it slipped my mind to ask about it) and shined it around. I don't think he ever saw the guy but he heard someone beating a hasty retreat.

Stuff like this made me realize you probably want to think long and hard about whether you really need a generator or not. It seems to me like it may be more trouble than it's worth, unless you've already incorporated it into your plans (which nobody had apparently). The guys I talked to didn't really need a generator for anything, they were just using it to run a fridge, a microwave, tv, whatever. All non-essential stuff when you get right down to it. Definitely not the type of usage to make me want to go out and wade through the mob for gas.

'course, these guys had wives and kids, so from their perspective it was probably preferable to fight the mob for gas rather than being at home listening to all the complaining about not having tv, computer, etc.

Oh, and another thing, apparently these events have made some people reconsider their position on gun ownership, because there were some people we knew who before didn't want a gun in the house, and now their changing their mind it sounds like. Nothing like a little civil breakdown to bring a dose of reality to someone's utopian view of society! :devil:

Generator is nice to have, I own an EU2000i Honda which is nice and quiet. Still, I built a 4' square enclosure for it from plywood, with an open top. Makes it much more difficult to pinpoint where the sound is coming from. On eco-throttle, you can't hear it from 100' away. I run mine during the day anyhow, and let everything sit for the night with the Honda locked up. 15 watt solar panel and a 7 amp charge controller keeps my Optima deep cycle battery charged up for charging batteries, computer, electronic games for the kids, phones, etc. Said battery is enough to run my pellet stove on an 800w (surge) inverter for the better part of the night if we lose power during the winter. The Honda absolutely sips fuel, BTW. Several threads here on the merits of this and the Yamaha 2400w. Fuel storage can be problematic, but a five gallon can, used sparingly, goes a long way in the EU2000i.

Stress_Test said:

'course, these guys had wives and kids, so from their perspective it was probably preferable to fight the mob for gas rather than being at home listening to all the complaining about not having tv, computer, etc.

Oh, and another thing, apparently these events have made some people reconsider their position on gun ownership, because there were some people we knew who before didn't want a gun in the house, and now their changing their mind it sounds like. Nothing like a little civil breakdown to bring a dose of reality to someone's utopian view of society! :devil:

Click to expand...

Sometimes it's more than just kids complaining. Such an emergency can make small children panic. And what parent wants to see that level of fear on the faces of their children. Making them see that things are still "normal" is a good way of keeping them calm.

It's amazing how many people choose to play pretend or lie to themselves. And these are supposed to be adults. If it takes a short-term emergency to cure them of their fantasy-filled delusions about what folks are really like during a civil breakdown . . . good! They should have dealt with reality long ago.

Monocrom said:

.................... They should have dealt with reality long ago.

Click to expand...

Oh but they are! They're getting all spun up about the end of the world tomorrow!!!



Way I look at it, yeah, the world could end tomorrow.... you/me/whoever could also be killed in a car wreck tomorrow.... either way, the end result is, you're dead! So why worry about a silly little thing like the end of the world?

If it does all end tomorrow, I just hope it's in spectacular fashion, similar to the story about The Restaurant at the End of the Universe from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". (excellent book by the way if you like a mixture of sci-fi and Monty Python)

Ahem, anyway, back to preparedness... I'd be real interested to know the numbers of how many people are preparing for the end of the world tomorrow, versus how many people are preparing for a major hurricane strike this season..... if I were a betting man, I know which event I'd lay my money on to happen first :ironic:

And for the end of the world, I offer this song to celebrate the event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_sY2rjxq6M

Burn baby burn! :devil: