Test of a Flashaholics Spirit

LedLad · Dec 14, 2007

Hi guys,
Well....we here in the midwest have been tested, we got a severe ice storm here in the Missouri/Iowa/Kansas area starting Monday and Continuing through Tuesday and when all was said and done we ended up with about 3 inches of ice on EVERYTHING, tree limbs, whole trees, power lines, cable tv lines and power poles snapped off by the tens of thousands. Our power went off at 5 a.m. Tuesday and was just restored fully today. Let me tell you, you will NEVER appreciate the obsession we all share with lights until you go through several days of severe conditions with no power to your home. Thankfully for myself and my family I was able to pull out several old cheap multi-LED flashlights and my one decent light (a RoV Sportsman Extreme 2aa) and use a mini-mag with the magled conversion (which until this storm I thought was useless) as a candle.
We (thankfully) have a freestanding propane furnace with the good old fashioned pilot light and a propane cooktop so we weren't without heat but many many people in the area were/are and we took in several family members who were having problems.
In survival mode my minimag in candle form and 2 OLD oil lamps provided all of our area lighting for 3 days. Just rambling on here but I wanted to let you all know that you never know just how good you have it until something like this happens to you and I'd like to encourage you all to take a minute and think about what you would do in similar circumstances. Thankfully I'm sort of a preparedness nut and we had lots of canned soups and the like on hand and our family survived very well and it was even sort of an adventure but there are TENS of THOUSANDS of people here in America's heartland who are still without power and a large percentage of those will be without power for 5-10 days and I have to wonder and worry about those people because I know that most of them never took the time to prepare any at all and are in dire straits.
I would also like to pass on the fact that entire towns (including my own until today) in a 100 mile radius still have no power and we are/have seen almost no help from FEMA and the State Emergency Management Agency, the only help has been from the RED CROSS who delivered 2 hot meals to people in my town. I would encourage you to get active with your local community govt. and federal govt. where possible to ensure that there is help for people in your area when disasters like this occur, also, as I said above, the RED CROSS is a great organization who (in most cases) is on the scene of these events even before govt. assistance and I would encourage anyone who is contemplating charity giving to consider the RED CROSS (the True EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY). Thanks for reading, I just wanted to vent and you guys seemed a likely target...We now return you to our regularly scheduled Flashaholic programming. :thumbsup:

a4d · Dec 14, 2007

Well thats good to hear that you and you family got through ok. With the preparedness, same here i have two shovels in my truck big chain, ropes gloves,hats,raincoat and pants, 10million CP light, and lots of other stuff.

If you read the quote in my signature you'll see how obsessed with beign prepared i am. I actually got that from my 10th grade world history teahcer.

jugg2 · Dec 14, 2007

Thats good that yall are ok. Some people think you are weird if you prepare for the worst, that is until they need your help.

woodrow · Dec 15, 2007

I am glad you made it through, and had light. I used to live in Manhattan, KS, and my friends still there said that they lost power monday the 10th and they are told they SHOULD get it back the 22nd. Thats 10 days with no electricity.

Its nice to have some long running lights/ lanterns. The brightest candle-mode light I have ever had was the Tiablo A8 Q5....unscrew the head and sit the battery tube in the head with the bezel down for stability, and that thing will light up a very large room on high. Little Brunton AA lanterns from target are nice too.

Good luck with the rest of the winter!

scottaw · Dec 15, 2007

We're looking at an inch of ice tonight, everyone in the house has one of my lights in their pocket. Crossing my fingers i don't really need them. At least the furnace runs without power, it's about 14 right now.

Burgess · Dec 16, 2007

Yeah, we all wish for power failures.

Trouble is, they knock out our furnace, a/c, water-pump, freezer, also.

Glad that you were well-prepared for this. :thumbsup:

Pity that most folks choose to ignore preparations,
until it bites 'em in the behind.

And never count on the "gummint" bein' there for days and days and days.

And just think . . . .

Winter hasn't even started yet !

:naughty:
_

Crenshaw · Dec 16, 2007

"better to have it and not need it, then to need it and not have it"

i knew someone said that before, couldnt think of who...thanks a4d

thats incidently MY favourite quote too

Crenshaw

Dan_GSR · Dec 16, 2007

i don't have ANY long run time lights
all of my lights are high performance lights that burn the batteries in about 1 hour

i should get some, but none seem to peak my interest

Saiga · Dec 17, 2007

(quote) i don't have ANY long run time lights
all of my lights are high performance lights that burn the batteries in about 1 hour.i should get some, but none seem to peak my interest"

hey dan, check out the highly popular gerber infinity ultra. It's a rock-solid little AA light with surprisingly good output,( for a non-rebel,cree,etc.) but apparantly will run for days,and will use up old batteries that other electronics are considering "dead". They're all over the place under $20, but basegear was the best deal i found, @ 14.95. I have a couple surefires,streamlights,fenix's,etc. and i REALLY like this "cheap" little light.:thumbsup:

GreySave · Dec 17, 2007

LedLad:

VERY good post. As you can see from my signature this topic is one that is taken quite seriously. Unfortunately many folks believe that it either will not happen to them or if it does that the government will step in and bail them out. The reality is that in many cases the first 72 hours are all yours to handle, as it will be at least that long before organized help can begin to arrive. "The first 72 (hours) are on you" is precisely the way it should be looked at. I personally recommend at least a 3 week (6 week if you can swing it) supply of all necessary items that are kept in an entirely seperate area from the regular supplies and rotated once or twice a year as required. That means more than just food.

Assume that you have no power and that no stores are available and no fuel is available to travel outside of the affected area. Assume that water is not available for food preparation or sanitary purposes. Do you have suitable containers that you can store water in? Sit down some night and write down everything that you and your family would need to get by for those three weeks. You might be surprised at the items you need. Three weeks might sound excessive, but in the case of a pandemic or other serious national emergency the movement of poeple may be restricted, so you may very well be on your own that long.

Remember that you do not have to purchase everything at once. You can buy a little at a time and gradually build up your supplies. Put a rotation date on each item so that you know when rotation is due. Make sure that the chosen storage location is as protected as possible from water entry, rodents, etc... If you have pets, do not forget to plan for their safety and survival as well.

Cydonia · Dec 17, 2007

Yeah, good post, might wake up a few slackers :poke:

And the OP is right about the Red Cross... and to think that they are a global organization too!

Dan_GSR said:
i don't have ANY long run time lights
all of my lights are high performance lights that burn the batteries in about 1 hour

i should get some, but none seem to peak my interest

:shakehead

LedLad · Dec 17, 2007

GreySave said:
LedLad:

VERY good post. As you can see from my signature this topic is one that is taken quite seriously. Unfortunately many folks believe that it either will not happen to them or if it does that the government will step in and bail them out. The reality is that in many cases the first 72 hours are all yours to handle, as it will be at least that long before organized help can begin to arrive. "The first 72 (hours) are on you" is precisely the way it should be looked at. I personally recommend at least a 3 week (6 week if you can swing it) supply of all necessary items that are kept in an entirely seperate area from the regular supplies and rotated once or twice a year as required. That means more than just food.

Assume that you have no power and that no stores are available and no fuel is available to travel outside of the affected area. Assume that water is not available for food preparation or sanitary purposes. Do you have suitable containers that you can store water in? Sit down some night and write down everything that you and your family would need to get by for those three weeks. You might be surprised at the items you need. Three weeks might sound excessive, but in the case of a pandemic or other serious national emergency the movement of poeple may be restricted, so you may very well be on your own that long.

Remember that you do not have to purchase everything at once. You can buy a little at a time and gradually build up your supplies. Put a rotation date on each item so that you know when rotation is due. Make sure that the chosen storage location is as protected as possible from water entry, rodents, etc... If you have pets, do not forget to plan for their safety and survival as well.

Excellent advice everyone...take it from me, he knows wherefrom he speaks...BE PREPARED, you just never know. Also a good point about HOW to prepare...I'm disabled and on a VERY fixed income but I set aside a small amount each month to spend solely on buying some item/s to have on hand for just such emergencies, everyone CAN do it, it's a question of will....I have (what I consider) wealthy relatives 1 town over who had nothing on hand and had to be put up by neighbors or freeze and starve, some people...

Rzr800 · Dec 17, 2007

LedLad said:
Excellent advice everyone...take it from me, he knows wherefrom he speaks...BE PREPARED, you just never know..everyone CAN do it, it's a question of will....

Thanks to everyone also for their comments and what seems to be the prevailing conservative opinion...don't count on the government or anyone else to do what you are indeed obligated to do for those closest to you.

Darkpower · Dec 17, 2007

LedLad said:
Hi guys,
Well....we here in the midwest have been tested, we got a severe ice storm here in the Missouri/Iowa/Kansas area starting Monday and Continuing through Tuesday and when all was said and done we ended up with about 3 inches of ice on EVERYTHING, tree limbs, whole trees, power lines, cable tv lines and power poles snapped off by the tens of thousands. Our power went off at 5 a.m. Tuesday and was just restored fully today. Let me tell you, you will NEVER appreciate the obsession we all share with lights until you go through several days of severe conditions with no power to your home. Thankfully for myself and my family I was able to pull out several old cheap multi-LED flashlights and my one decent light (a RoV Sportsman Extreme 2aa) and use a mini-mag with the magled conversion (which until this storm I thought was useless) as a candle.
We (thankfully) have a freestanding propane furnace with the good old fashioned pilot light and a propane cooktop so we weren't without heat but many many people in the area were/are and we took in several family members who were having problems.
In survival mode my minimag in candle form and 2 OLD oil lamps provided all of our area lighting for 3 days. Just rambling on here but I wanted to let you all know that you never know just how good you have it until something like this happens to you and I'd like to encourage you all to take a minute and think about what you would do in similar circumstances. Thankfully I'm sort of a preparedness nut and we had lots of canned soups and the like on hand and our family survived very well and it was even sort of an adventure but there are TENS of THOUSANDS of people here in America's heartland who are still without power and a large percentage of those will be without power for 5-10 days and I have to wonder and worry about those people because I know that most of them never took the time to prepare any at all and are in dire straits.
I would also like to pass on the fact that entire towns (including my own until today) in a 100 mile radius still have no power and we are/have seen almost no help from FEMA and the State Emergency Management Agency, the only help has been from the RED CROSS who delivered 2 hot meals to people in my town. I would encourage you to get active with your local community govt. and federal govt. where possible to ensure that there is help for people in your area when disasters like this occur, also, as I said above, the RED CROSS is a great organization who (in most cases) is on the scene of these events even before govt. assistance and I would encourage anyone who is contemplating charity giving to consider the RED CROSS (the True EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY). Thanks for reading, I just wanted to vent and you guys seemed a likely target...We now return you to our regularly scheduled Flashaholic programming. :thumbsup:

Good Thread. :thumbsup: I was wondering a few days ago if any of the members here were left in the dark and cold. I lived in New Hampshire during several Ice storms years ago. But I have since moved to back to my home state in the middle of hurricane alley.

My flashaholism came from learning to adapt off-grid (electrical power black-out) after the 2005 Hurricane season here in South Florida. I was without power for a total of 8 days in 2005. Three days after Hurricane Katrina and 5 days after Hurricane Wilma. I owned a good size generator, a twin cylinder water-cooled Honda an ES6500 (6.5 KVA), but what I discovered is that a generator is a complete false sense of preparedness. The problem is getting gasoline to keep the generator running. My Honda generator was able to run the entire house except the central air-conditioners, but the generator used approximately 0.8 to 1.0 gallons of gasoline an hour. Even with little or no load it consumes 0.67 gallon an hour. When Katrina formed, I thought we would lose power for a few hours to a day so I only gassed up 3- 5 gallon Jerry cans, plus the fuel in the Honda which was 4.4 gallons giving me a total of just shy of 20 gallons. I ended up siphoning gasoline out of my Ford F250. Fortunately, my Ford has a 29-gallon tank and no anti-siphoning filler neck like my Isuzu, which prevents any tube from going down the neck.

Well, to make a long story short, after the first day I realized after I went through about 14 gallons that I didn't have enough gasoline to keep the fridge cold because the radio and TV news were broadcasting that it would take as long as 7 to 10 days to restore power in certain area. Let me just say that I grew up in Florida and we were always aware of the Hurricane threats, but Katrina formed off the coast of Florida with only 24-36 hour warning and was a very weak hurricane, just a minimal Cat. 1 when it crossed Broward county where I live (of course we all know what happen 4 days later in NOLA). It was a shocker to me and many of my neighbors that a storm with 80 mph winds could take out so much of our power grid. Gas stations were without power and could not pump gasoline out of their underground tanks, and the gasoline stations that did have electricity were pumped dry by all the customers that converged on them.

Hurricane Wilma was even a bigger shocker. For that storm I thought that 35 gallons in Jerry cans plus the available gasoline in the truck would be enough. Boy was I wrong. Hurricane Wilma took out power in three counties in the highest population density areas of Florida. There were 6 million people plunged into darkness. My neighborhood went dark for 5 days. After 3 days there were still 2 million people without power. The gas stations that did have gas would limit a fill up to 10 gallons on the fridge areas of the power outage. The lines at some stations ran for miles with people walking up with jerry cans. Even when electricity was turned on in my area, the gasoline stations were still out.

The moral of my little story is that generators are only part of the "off-grid" survival. I found that the most useful light I had was a $12 folding fluorescent lantern made by Eveready. It runs on 4 D cells for 20 hours. I was lucky that I bought two of those years earlier. After the 2005 season I literally bought about 6 more of those, plus every type of battery operated light that I see at Target's, Home Depot, Wal-Mart's. I literally got addicted to battery operated lanterns and flashlights…I must now have about 50 devices. I now own about 6 maglites, 6 fenix lights (AA and CR123s), Surefire, Dorcys, Brinkman, Garrity…Its become an obsession, although I really enjoy them as toys, they really have an important use in a prolong electrical outage, because like I said if your going to be without power for days and weeks, getting fuel to run a generator 24 hours a day is going to be impossible. The reality is that those generators are great but you could be limited to running them for just a few hours a day…from 3 hours to maybe 10 hours. The problem is storing gasoline safely. Most counties have ordinance limiting gasoline storage to 25 gallons in (5) x 5-gallon jerry cans. But to this date, the Eveready Folding Fluorescent is one of the best long run, high output device that I have found. During the Wilma outage, it was that lantern that I had running at night from 11 pm to 7 am when I would shut down the generator for the night. I was stunned to wake up and find the lantern still glowing bright. I could use them for two nights in a row on a single set of D cell alkalines. I also had several Coleman propane lanterns that were brighter, but they would run for only 8 hours on a 1 lb tank/bottle and had some issues for indoor use. They also ran hotter than hell, which might be good for cold climates in an ice storm, but were miserable things to have in the sub-tropic where the temperature was 90 degrees and no airconditioning. I saved my propane for cooking.

GreySave · Dec 17, 2007

Great points about the generators etc...Darkpower. I went with the smaller ES3000 for fuel economy. It will not power the entire house, but with easy power management I can keep the critical systems (freezer, refrigerator, furrnace, kitchen gas range, etc..) running for an extended period of time. We have two traditional oil fueled hurricane lamps (in fixed locations to avoid fire risk) for basic lighting and I have a lot of partially depleted AA and 9 volt batteries for use in the X1s and Safe Lights with the 123 powered lights for other duties if needed. Also have propane powered camping gear for both lighting and cooking and always keep a spare propane tank for the gas grill.

No plan is perfect. You never see all of the bugs until you actually try implementing your plan, and unless you actually "go primal" for a few days the first time you usually get to try your plan is when you need it. If everyone just takes a little of what is said here with them and implements it they'll be a lot better off if the need arises. For our area, the big risks are large ice storms or major summer storms that could knock out power for days or even weeks.

Many local Emergency Management Agencies will be more than happy to talk to individuals about disaster preparedness and provide reasonable guidlines for the threats that exist in your particular area. I would encourage folks to give them a call and chat for a while. If they cannot or will not take the time, your local Red Cross Chapter is another good source of informatiion for planning for your specific area.

Darkpower · Dec 17, 2007

GreySave said:
Great points about the generators etc...Darkpower. I went with the smaller ES3000 for fuel economy. It will not power the entire house, but with easy power management I can keep the critical systems (freezer, refrigerator, furrnace, kitchen gas range, etc..) running for an extended period of time. We have two traditional oil fueled hurricane lamps (in fixed locations to avoid fire risk) for basic lighting and I have a lot of partially depleted AA and 9 volt batteries for use in the X1s and Safe Lights with the 123 powered lights for other duties if needed. Also have propane powered camping gear for both lighting and cooking and always keep a spare propane tank for the gas grill.

No plan is perfect. You never see all of the bugs until you actually try implementing your plan, and unless you actually "go primal" for a few days the first time you usually get to try your plan is when you need it. If everyone just takes a little of what is said here with them and implements it they'll be a lot better off if the need arises. For our area, the big risks are large ice storms or major summer storms that could knock out power for days or even weeks.

Many local Emergency Management Agencies will be more than happy to talk to individuals about disaster preparedness and provide reasonable guidlines for the threats that exist in your particular area. I would encourage folks to give them a call and chat for a while. If they cannot or will not take the time, your local Red Cross Chapter is another good source of informatiion for planning for your specific area.

Last year and this year, I went all out and spent some money on survival gear because the forecasters were warning us that we were going to have very active seasons, hence my flashlight and battery buying compulsion, in addition to my other off-grid survival gear. But I am getting ready for the big one in which I can anticipate 1 month or more off grid. My family thinks I've gone nuts but if a Cat 2 storm like Wilma can take our power down for 5 days I hate to see what a Cat 4 or 5 will do. I know when Andrew hit it was common for some areas to be without electrical power for 8 weeks.

Last year I bought the Honda EU2000i generator, and this year a second EU2000i for parallel operation. Each can run for 15 hours on one gallon with a 400-watt load and together they can run 3200 watts continuously (4000 watts peak). I also bought a marine-type freezer from Waeco that can run on 120 or 12 volts and draws only 4 amps @ 12 volts. It can run for 12 hours easily on a regular 100-amp hour car battery. I still will need the big 6500VA generator but my plan is to run that for just an hour or less per day. I have well water and so in order to have water for the house and pressurize it, I need a big 240-volt generator to run the large water pumps, plus the water heater. But the plan I have is to scale the generator power to the electrical load as needed.

The plan is to run generators as little as possible while charging batteries. Generators are most efficient at their rated capacity. Hence the best kilowatt/hr per gallon of gasoline is when they are at rated capacity. There is nothing worse then to burn gasoline in a big generator when all you need is 150 watts for a small portable refrigerator. That is why I bought the EU2000i, which is an inverter technology generator. It can also charge automotive and marine batteries. I calculated that in my next off-grid event I could get by on less than 4 gallons of gasoline a day, yet I will have a small portable fridge running 24 hours and all the light and water I need by combining large and small generators, batteries and inverters. One of the things that I also bought was a portable ice machine. It runs off one of the EU2000i and makes lots of ice for an ice chest, so that if I run the EU2000i for 8 hours, I can make a ice chest full of ice at the cost of ½ gallon of gasoline.

Back when Wilma hit, I was running my big 6500 VA monster just to keep the fridge cold and I remember how crazy the economics of it was because by day 4, I really didn't have that much food worth saving, yet I needed to run the generator at least 12 to 16 hours a day to keep the freezer compartment cold at a cost of $40-$50 a day in gasoline for what was probably $75 worth of groceries. It wasn't worth it. Next time, I am abandoning the big kitchen refrigerator for small energy efficient marine freezer and I'll be saving only the frozen food worth keeping.

fieldops · Dec 17, 2007

Darkpower said:
Back when Wilma hit, I was running my big 6500 VA monster just to keep the fridge cold and I remember how crazy the economics of it was because by day 4, I really didn't have that much food worth saving, yet I needed to run the generator at least 12 to 16 hours a day to keep the freezer compartment cold at a cost of $40-$50 a day in gasoline for what was probably $75 worth of groceries. It wasn't worth it. Next time, I am abandoning the big kitchen refrigerator for small energy efficient marine freezer and I'll be saving only the frozen food worth keeping.

Excellent information. +1 on the EU2000. Best machine for the job IMHO.
I also setup a bank of 8 AGM 125AH batteries with 4 20w monocrystaline solar panels for charging. A small wind turbine is in the works too. You just never know what's going to happen to you. It's when you assume it won't happen to you that you're going to get kicked in the rear.

f22shift · Dec 17, 2007

Darkpower.. was there any crime to worry about?
or mooching neighbors?

Darkpower · Dec 17, 2007

f22shift said:
Darkpower.. was there any crime to worry about?

No crime where I was. Both Dade and Broward County imposed a sundown to sun up curfew. I live about 100 feet from a major parkway and I walked over to the edge of my property and you could see a cop car stationed right in the middle of the parkway with their emergency light on. No one was allowed on the streets and those police cars were stationed at every major intersection and they stopped everyone asking for ID and sending people home. If you got caught they were relatively easy if you had a good excuse such as on your way home. They eased up on the third day and the curfew started at 11 PM to dawn fro the next few days.

But the curfew was the key to eliminating crime. It was very well handled. But I always felt uneasy about leaving the house to hunt for gasoline because I had no telephone line, and cell lines were difficult to get because everyone was using a cell phone and the batteries at the cell towers were running down. The biggest security issue was that my fence was down and my generator was susceptible to theft. I would hide it behind pieces of broken fence.

fieldops said:
Excellent information. +1 on the EU2000. Best machine for the job IMHO.

fieldops said:
I also setup a bank of 8 AGM 125AH batteries with 4 20w monocrystaline solar panels for charging. A small wind turbine is in the works too. You just never know what's going to happen to you. It's when you assume it won't happen to you that you're going to get kicked in the rear.

We think alike. I haven't set up a battery bank yet, I simply have three stand alone Group 27 batteries that I can tap off with a 750 watt inverter or connect directly to the Waeco freezer for power when the generators are off. But a battery bank with a charger/inverter like they use on RVs is my next project and hopefully a system of solar panels is a project that I would definitely undertake down the road. The Marine and RV community has lots of information on battery banks and inverter/chargers. I need a 120/240 inverter/charger that I can hook in series with the generator so that when the batteries run down, the generator needs to run through the device and charge the battery and also pass the AC power to the load, therefore always maintaining current to the load, whether the generator is running or not.

This year I had an automatic transfer switch installed called "One Plug" which the electric company came and installed for about $900. The transfer switch really makes a big difference because during Wilma we were all tapping into the main electrical cabinet illegally. Many of my neighbors made suicide cords and backfeeding into the panel via the clothes dryer outlet. I did it a little more formally by wiring a pigtail with a L14-30 on a cord into a breaker switch directly into the cabinet. The house electrical panel literally plugged into the generator. But it was not fool proof. I had to manually connect and disconnect the outside grid first. Technically it was illegal. With the transfer switch I no longer have to worry about disconnecting from the grid. It's a totally fool proof system to connect power to the house.

One PLUG<< Link

Federal LG · Dec 17, 2007

Wow! Here in Brazil we don´t have snow that much (just a little in the south), but we do have a lot of problems with floods.

Sincerely, Im glad to hear that your family is well!

And cheers to Red Cross! They act a lot here in Brasil too...

I am a flashaholic too, and I have learned since I was a boy scout (long time ago) that "be prepared" is not just a motto!

Greetings from Brasil!

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