It was a rough weekend. Power went out just after midnight Thursday.
Thursday morning, before sun-up, I had to dig my car out of the driveway in order to get to work. Power was out for about a mile to the west, and out to the horizon to the east and north.
Got to work and shortly afterward my wife calls to tell me the tree in the backyard has fallen onto wires and the neighbor's garage; doesn't know if the wires are for power or cable+telephone. I decided I needed my eyeballs there to tell if it's an emergency or not. Asked to leave work.
Getting back home took a long time, as signals from about 4 miles away were out. Half of tree (about a 1 ton 40' trunk) was hanging in cable+telephone wires and resting on neighbor's garage. Debris from the winds was scattered everywhere, and it took me hours to dig/rake the stuff up so I could get a generator in place. I have all my household information scanned in and stored on a server, so I have to get power up to that room in order to get phone numbers to call, and the genset I need is 230lbs, too large to get through the debris. (For example, I tried very early Thursday to get tree trimmers out, but the entire area is a war zone so all six I reached were either not answering or rolling over to voicemail. I made an appointment with one, but eventually got a tree trimmer out who had done work a year or so ago on my tree. None of the ones I cold-called had returned calls.)
The mess was so bad my brain kind of vapor-locked for a half day. Slowly I realized the work was too much to accomplish in a day, or even two. I had to mentally make a list of what I needed to get to, and just work to get those done, subject to what my body and my bad back was going to allow me to do.
I dug out enough debris to get a small generator to a basement access panel to run an electric blower on our water heater, so I could ignite the heater and make hot water.
Next, dig out debris so I could get the large generator up and running to power the refrigerator and backfeed one circuit in the house (bad practice, yes, but I haven't bought a transfer switch yet) to get lights and microwave. Then, work on getting a tree trimmer, getting spare gasoline supply sorted out (jiggler transfer pump failed and had to get to HF to get another one).
The local gas station ran out of regular the next day, likely because a lot of people were buying it for tree trimming and generators.
Power came back on unusually early for us, about 14 hours out total. People across the street were out for 72+ hours, and a mile away power is still out today. Internet was out for 3 days. I had to go to a Starbucks to use theirs, and a *lot* of other people were doing the same thing so access was 128kbit/sec. (I had to do my timecard. Silly, eh? My boss told me to do it and I'm still thinking it is a must to get it done.)
It all sounds half-planned, but, compared to others I would seem well-planned. Next-door neighbor couldn't do any cleanup because he bought electric gardening tools ("environmentally-friendly") which don't work without electricity. Another neighbor, when they got power back, strung 150' of 16-ga extension cord to another neighbor's house. I don't know what they were running off that cord, but at 150' a 16-ga cord is probably good for 400 watts.
Another couple were in the very long line at HF buying one of those 2-stroke 800W generators. He said he was going to use it for lights, had a manual in his hand for his refrigerator but knew it wouldn't be able to start it, but I got the feeling he was going to try anyway out of desperation. They were cleaned out of any other generator, all gas cans, and all cheap extension cords. I needed/could do with another 25' L14-30 12-gauge cord, an unusual everyday cord, so I had no problem finding one. Everyone at Smart-and-Final was buying multiple 20-lb bags of ice, cleaning them out quickly. And, I was hitting the stores earlier than most people would.
The nighttime temperature is 35F with 10% RH, much colder and drier than anyone is used to.
Walking in any direction I see downed trees. I've never seen tree bursts before, but there are plenty around. Signs made from 2x2s broken at ground height, signs made from 4x4 pressure-treated lumber broken at ground height, and even little metal "no parking this side of street" twisted 270 degrees and bent to the ground.
) Does anyone have a backup generator that they would use for things like the fridge? As far as clothing and blankets, I feel pretty good about what we have. I've got a fair amount of backpacking stuff as well if we ever did have to mobilize. My stove is a gas stove. Would that operate with a power outage? I guess I would have to light it with a lighter. I also have a wood stove in the basement, but currently no wood or fuel so currently wouldn't do me much good. I suppose I have a chainsaw and a couple of trees in the yard. LOL I'm actually pretty lucky we didn't get hit with this windstorm. I have two massive trees and I'm pretty confident that they would have been blown over and would easily damage my home depending on where they fell.
