Thursday, January 23, 2014

Survival Kit Part 2 "The Big Items"

I have collected numerous things for the "just in case" extended power outage. In the video, I show you what I've collected, and I hope it, if nothing else, will get you to thinking of what you might need if the dreaded power outage comes again. After the ice storm, came through and the power went out for the entire city, things changed dramatically. When we left the house on day 2, the temperature in the house was 36 degrees. I know that's not cold, and I agree if that was the outside temperature, but it wasn't, this was inside the house, and momma was ready to leave! LOL We did have water, and hot water at that. Two things that I like alot that we were missing were the ability to HEAT and EAT! At one time we did have a gas stove, but now they we don't.."poof" ..ice storm! Now if we did still have the gas stove, I think we could've been able to "tough" it out, because we could use the stove for cooking and heating (with caution of course). So, that's where my "quest" came from, to be able to "Stay Put" the next time something like this occurs. In fact, I guess I really need to change the name of my video and post, because just recently I found an article that changed the words 'survival kit' to 'SIP' kits. SIP stands for Shelter In Place, but for a country boy like me, I like Stay In Place better, and that's exactly what I'd like to do. So back to the contents of the video, my 1st goal was to stay warm, and Google is your friend (and your enemy....) The first thing we found was at Rural King, a Black & Decker Storm Station, got it on sale, (It still can be found on Amazon, different models),not as cheap though. Now for comfort and warmth, I set out to find some mummy bags, actually found some decent ones with a reasonable price on eBay, I bought 4 of them. They are good down to 10 degrees, so my goal now is to be able to keep the house warmer than 10 degrees! I then set out to buy our Heat source, I bought a Big Buddy Propane Heater, it's made for indoors, it has 3 settings, 4,000 - 9,000 and 18,000 btus. It will heat a 400 sq ft space!! My plan is to close off the living room, and have everyone pile in there. We will cover the windows and doors to keep heat in the room, and I think this will allow the room to heat up to the point where we can turn the heater down to the 4 or 9,000 setting. So next, lighting, not really necessary but it does give you some comfort and a feeling of normalcy. We have kerosene lanterns, I have an old RAYO (1890), we have battery operated lanterns, flashlights and we have crank models of the lantern and flashlights. And we have all kinds of candles, and buddy burner to give us some light and heat. Next time I'll try to post a list of items that we have acquired for the EAT part of surviving the next ice storm.
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