Irene - Some Lessons Learned This Weekend

I'm with you here in Florida. For a while, we were directly in the path of this huge Cat 3 storm. We have preps at home, but with some of the tracks showing it going right over our house, we were making plans to leave dodge with two vehicles to ensure we have plenty of supplies and equipment with us.

Glad it turned away from us (this time), and am sorry to see all of the havoc that it left with millions of others. Sadly the body count keeps going up.

 

Even though we didn't have the impact others had, I intentionally went through the motions for the benefit of teaching my young boys (and also my wife) a few lessons. On the eve of the storm's closest approach to us, I flipped the fuses and cut our power. We broke out the light sticks, flashlights, etc. The kids got a kick out of taking a bath with their light sticks... it's like a game to them. We did some sterno cooking in the kitchen to make some hot chocolate and played a few hands of Uno under the light of a lantern before camping out in the living room. Because we had air mattresses (and nobody wanted to blow them up manually) I taught them a lesson on how to improvise... namely by using the computer's UPS to power the air pump. This also served as a power source for recharging cell phones. It's not a limitless supply of power, but for this overnight exercise we didn't drain it of its charge.

If I personally learned anything, I'd say that this was a reminder of the mess we went through in 2004 when we had no power for a week. It was also good to just practice going through a off-nominal evening and making sure that the human components (wife and kids) react in a reasonable manner. Everybody did very well and they gained a few more memories in the process.