Saturday, January 14, 2017
Out go the lights
I was cooking a nice dinner for my lovely wife and I. There was a nice steak from a local farm cooking on the woodstove. The rice and veggies were just about done. Then the lights went out. It had been windy all day so I wasn't too surprised.
Normally my lights are powered from my solar electric system, but due to all the cloudy days we've had the lights were on the grid. It would have been a simple thing to switch them back to the batteries. There was enough power saved up to easily get us through the night. However, we decided to light a couple of candles instead and have a romantic candlelight dinner.
While we were having dinner I noticed a fire truck drove past the house. They normally don't come around the lake, so I assumed there must be a problem out on the main road. Sure enough, after dinner I looked and could see flashing red lights in the distance. It was hard to judge looking through the trees, but they appeared to be down by the main road.
A lot of people would go down the road to see what the problem was. I didn't need to know. The last thing the firefighters needed was some guy hanging around getting in the way. Besides, when I was a firefighter back in the day I had my fill of dealing with dangerous downed power lines. No sense putting myself in harm's way when I'm not getting paid to do so.
While my lovely wife and I were having after dinner drinks the utility truck drove by. About a half hour later the grid was back up. No problem.
It did make me think. What if this was a real Lights Out situation. What if the grid didn't come back for a long long time. Well, we had the woodstove going and have enough fuel for some time. The pantry is well stocked. We have good water, and we'd be in pretty good shape for some time.
Now imagine the grid goes down where you are and stays down. How prepared are you right now? Not how prepared you could be later, but right now. Hope you feel good about your situation. If not, maybe this would be a good time to do something about it.
-Sixbears
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It's nice you had romantic dinner.
ReplyDeleteIt was rather pleasant. Nice when you don't have to worry about freezing.
DeleteI'd be eating lots of rice and beans cooked either in the fireplace or on the wood stove in the basement. Water would be a problem since the well pump is electrical. I'd have to haul my butt down to the pond to fill containers. Would if I had to.
ReplyDeleteWorkable. It's a plan and better than what most people have.
DeleteI'm well prepared for power outages, but even so when I have a 30 second or 30 and longer the first few seconds causes a butt pucker! :-)
ReplyDeleteWe get used to things just working all the time. When it doesn't it's a minor shock . . . no pun intended. :)
DeleteMy water comes from a well and if the power is out for too long, it will loose its prime and since it is about 130 feet deep, it takes a lot of water to prime it. Had to do it a few times and had to purchase a lot of bottled water to prime it.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a royal pain. Have you considered keeping a few jugs of water handy just in case?
DeleteMy shallow well has an overflow so in a pinch I can fill up jugs at the spout.
We would be fine for quite a while. But I sure would miss the Internet...
ReplyDeleteSo would I. Good thing I've thousands of paper books to pass the time with.
Delete