Good day to review power outage preps

Federal, state, local government agencies along with the relevant private organizations are practicing grid failure throughout Mexico, the USofA and Canada THIS WEEK – Wednesday and Thursday. (web search or see this NY Times article)

Be as smart as they are and practice it yourself. Use this as an opportunity and motivator to pretend their grid down will really take place. Plan TODAY what you would do if the power goes off this Wednesday and doesn’t come back on for a day – several days – a week … go as far as you can with the plan.

Think about it for at least a few minutes. Those who research it say the stores will be empty in half a day to two days. Visualize empty stores. How you set for water? food? heat?

A primary goal of the drill, scheduled for November, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid cripples the supply chain for everyday necessities.

Taking my own advice, we just completed a review of battery operated lights and batteries … shortage exposed in AAA batteries which went on the shopping list. Also ordered online: two 18-LED work lights for $12 total, including shipping.

Next up today: fill water jugs … serious preppers will laugh, but 20 gallons in jugs and living next to a river will just have to do (bonus points for our ceramic filter).

We recently got a fake-gas-log fireplace with a big propane tank installed. It really heats our cabin nicely. Cooking on our camp stove is a bit crude, but functional. We are well shy of where I would like to be in many, many ways, but we have a short-term outage covered.

P.S. Since September 2001, many really significant events have coincided with drills that were directly related. There are several really good reasons for using this one as a motivator to checking your own preparedness for power grid failure.