Where are we living?
- Thread starter aramis
- Start date
Several people have told me they do drink the milk, but not always eat up the bread.
I mentioned since I had survived without electricity due to hurricanes, they should buy food that doesn't need cooking nor refrigeration. No idea if they are going to do that or not.
There was a sprinkling of snow flakes a few weeks ago north of here. Rather early, not sure by how much, according to my relatives.
I know i have several flashlights, a case of bottled water, backpack stove with fuel, and about 5 Mountain house meals. Along with a number of non-cook snacks. So I am ready if we get snowed in.
Yea, watching the craziness of what clears of the shelves is funny...
After Hurricane Fran, I made my way to a friends house with stuff from my freezer, and we shared a meal between his freezer and mine. We cooked up my frozen chicken pot pies in his dutch over over the camp stove.
A few days later, the local Whole Foods had to clear out their freezer and gave away food. I took home a pork loin and cooked it up on my camp stove, inviting a neighbor I had met (he worked at the local computer store and lived downstairs) and we had a nice meal.
Some days later free ice was offered at some locations and maybe bottled water.
The only sensible thing that gets sold out is the bottled water.
I don't have the discipline to keep a rotating stock of reasonable stuff. The best way to handle things is definitely to have bottled water and canned goods on hand that you rotate through as well as a manual can opener and a camp stove.
I do have a Coleman multi-fuel stove and some white gas. In a pinch, I could siphon more from the car and use that until it clogged up the stove.
If we don't loose gas utility, the grill will cook lots of stuff (our oven will be useless, it's electric, we do have a gas range).
@ffilz
I have two small camp stoves. One uses propane, which may or may not work well in cold weather. And a white gas MSR stove.
My relatives have a propane grill. They have used to down around freezing.
Bottled water, flashlights and batteries typically get bought up just as a hurricane, etc. gets in the Gulf of Mexico. If I don't use the water and non cook food by November 30, I generally drink/eat it up over the winter and get more in March.
Some folks buy tape for their windows, in spite of announcements on weather channel and local news programs from the Emergency preparedness folks who say don't waste your money. Plywood gets bought up to. There was a big run on gas generators a few years ago. I asked one coworker how were they going to store the gas ? They live in an apartment.
Now I have to deal with snow possibilities. The local county and city maintanance, etc. are clueless on how to handle such weather. Last time, I made sure I had plenty of non cook food, bottled water, and stayed home.
I have two small camp stoves. One uses propane, which may or may not work well in cold weather. And a white gas MSR stove.
My relatives have a propane grill. They have used to down around freezing.
Bottled water, flashlights and batteries typically get bought up just as a hurricane, etc. gets in the Gulf of Mexico. If I don't use the water and non cook food by November 30, I generally drink/eat it up over the winter and get more in March.
Some folks buy tape for their windows, in spite of announcements on weather channel and local news programs from the Emergency preparedness folks who say don't waste your money. Plywood gets bought up to. There was a big run on gas generators a few years ago. I asked one coworker how were they going to store the gas ? They live in an apartment.
Now I have to deal with snow possibilities. The local county and city maintanance, etc. are clueless on how to handle such weather. Last time, I made sure I had plenty of non cook food, bottled water, and stayed home.
Snow is fun... A week or two after we came home with our first daughter I had to hike through the snow to get formula... Amazingly our postpartum douala lived close enough that she hiked through the snow one day to help my wife...
The longest we have been snowed in here in Portland OR is about a 10 days if I remember right. I have all wheel drive and decent tires so I have ventured out after stuff started to run out. One storm I went off to the store as the storm was coming in. It took me a long time to get home, but I made it. At one point, I waited for an intersection to clear of folks who didn't know how to drive in the stuff before proceeding down the hill and back up the hill on the other side. At least with snow the stores usually manage to get some restock in after the first few days.
My biggest fear is an earthquake...
I recently read an article about that. The most important takeaway from it is that the generic preparedness advice someone might get from Arbitrary Place In America will likely not prepare someone for this event.
The concern about the planned utter devastation of infrastructure will likely heavily delay how quickly outside responders can bring in aid. Of note was the nature of the rugged terrain and the suggestions simply that none of the bridges will survive, thus making the roads impassable.
The baseline suggestion was 60 days of shelter in place.
I'm a 2-3 week guy, here in earthquake prone So Cal. But we get them all the time, and, on a large scale, they're annoying rather than devastating. It's an old community where we built our freeways on top of the grid, rather than in the grid. So, even if our freeways collapse, we still have other (LOTS of other) roads we can use. So, 2-3 weeks I consider to more than enough.
In Oregon/Washington, though, it doesn't sound like it's even a good start.
I wish you all luck up there.
Well, we do have two brand new bridges which should help...
I would think that having waterway access to the ocean helps, though I'm not sure what kind of amphibious support the US military has these days.
I have no idea if our house will slide down the hill (or if houses uphill of ours will...).
Frank
West side of Oregon , the routine threats are fires and flooding. If you're in the mountains, as I am, the real threat is simply the sheriff closing the roads due to snow... so restock can be a couple days. I try to keep a week on hand... don't always succeed.
None of the fires have been local to me, but the smoke and ash has been.
In case of major earthquake... where I'm at, I'm pretty much in trouble...
The road west has multiple bridges and lots of drop-offs. The road east has no bridges, but several sections have washed out in the past, and it's almost all steep drop offs, so a failure of the roadbed becomes reduction from two lanes to 1 or fewer lanes.
I don't know of any roads that go north or south to another East-West road to a population center.
Central Arizona highlands. Pretty much the only threat is wild fire. My neighborhood a mile from the city line and the forest is a Firewise community.
We were the only city in the US that had a hotshot crew. That ended when all 19 of them perished a few years ago in the Yarnell fire.
We were the only city in the US that had a hotshot crew. That ended when all 19 of them perished a few years ago in the Yarnell fire.
Oh, yea, that makes sense...
Still Portland will be quite a mess after an earthquake. Being up in the hills, it might be a challenge to get to things, but unless our house totally collapses, we should be ok for a few days which may be all we need...
the flooding of the 9th to 15th made shopping in Corvallis a bit difficult - it seems that Bimart didn't get all their weekly trucks, likewise Safeway. Several common items went out of stock.
for those who don't know, Oregon-34 east of Corvallis had water flowing several inches deep across the highway for about 1/8 mile. at 1930 on the 9th was 5" deep, and flowing about 1-2 mph at a right angle to the road. Multiple feeder roads were closed due to flooding, and that road got closed for a while on the 10th... possibly longer.
The rivers are still swollen. The tiny unnamed creek (which is literally under me - it runs through a culvert under my RV parking spot) on the property is up 6" or so still, peaking at about 9" on the 9th - just enough to flow into Mom's basement.
No real risk here, but I really should upload the footage somewhere.
Ullarsskald1957
SOC-12
Originally from western Massachusetts (Springfield area), went college at Norwich in Vermont 75 - 79 (started gaming there), have lived in Ohio (Dayton area, twice - WPAFB), northwest Florida (Eglin AFB), eastern Nebraska (Offutt AFB), northern Illinois (on the Wisconsin border north of Rockford) and am now in Saint Marys County, MD, about as far south in the state you can go without being in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
