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[Mominohio]

On 3/1/2015 Marsha2003 said:

I live in an earthquake-prone area and keep a backpack three-day emergency supply for each person which probably isn't sufficient, but I have no place to store barrels of water. Battery-operated candles take care of our occasional power outages that usually last no more than ten hours.

A three day back pack is one of the very best things I think people can do. If properly stocked, you have medicine, first aid, clothing, food, water, etc, and it is contained, and ready to grab and go. We all have one in our car, as some in our family have 40 or more minute commutes, and in bad weather, may wish to stay at work or a friend's house much closer to work/school. Having this makes it easy to be away from home for a day or two.

And I love flameless candles for emergency purposes. We have them worked into the decor all through the house, and at night, when there are storm warnings, I turn them on and let them burn all night, so no matter when or what we might wake up to, we have light to see our way around or out of the house. So much safer than real candles.

[AuntG]

Sometimes I wonder if we should buy a generator in case the power goes out for several days. Never really gave it much thought at our first home, but with a finished basement, I'd hate for the sump pump not to be able to work during an outage.

[GCR18]

No preparations in the cellar. I've been in the midwest nine years. A couple years ago, we had a tornado. My house was hit by lightening and we lost power for a day. I have all the supplies, just not centralized to one area.

[Reba055]

I'm a native Floridian over 50. Thank God I've never experienced a direct hit from a hurricane or tornado, but I have been close enough to have to deal with extended power outages many times over the years. We are always prepared. I was brought up that way and have continued to do it myself. I don't know why you wouldn't keep stocked up on these essential things. I always watch the chaos on TV when a major storm is threatening and everyone stampedes the grocery and hardware stores last minute. Who wants to be stuck in all that craziness ?? I will say that the utility companies have been doing much better the last few years. I guess because of fiber optics and more underground lines. We have also been blessed to not have any major storms. Being without power is definitely not fun!

[nomar]

AuntG....we have a finished basement also and was afraid of the sump pump quitting, so my husband installed a "water powered back-up" sump pump, as the back-up battery on the sump pump was always dead. So far, we have not had it come on with power being out during a heavy rain storm. But, a generator sounds like a good idea too.

[chrystaltree]

We are in a condo now but we raised our family in a huge colonial that had a basement. I believe in being prepared but we never thought we'd have to spend days or weeks in the basement. Even if we lived in tornado alley, I would prepare a place to ride it out but tornadoes don't last long and I doubt that I would think that maybe we'll be trapped down here for a few days. We had kept bottled water, flash lights, batteries, canned food, batter operated lanterns in the basement. But we also kept these things upstairs in our pantry. It's not wise to keep all of your emergency supplies in one place. We both remembered the Blizzard of 78. Even now, I keep emergency supplies. With all the snow storms we've had this winter, I am happy to say that we did not lose our power but there have been storms and hurricanes where we lost power for many hours.

[goodstuff]

We don't have a basement in our current two-story home, and I don't miss it at all except in times of storms! When we have severe storm warnings here, we have to go to a bathroom in the interior of our home, which isn't nearly as safe as a basement......but it's the best we can do in this house. We do keep flashlights and a battery and crank-powered radio in our bedroom to be grabbed in case of emergency.

We don't have a huge stockpile of food and water, but we always keep enough food in our pantry to last perhaps a couple of weeks and enough jugs of water for perhaps the same period on an emergency basis. Those kinds of supplies would be more for a civil defense or other type of emergency that might disrupt services, and not so much an ongoing severe storm.

[depglass]

I live in an area of Doomsday Preppers, so its made me think I better do a little something, but I'm not going to the extremes my neighbors do, like buy an extra 1000 gallon propane tank, etc. So far I just keep a few extra gallons of water on hand, and I've always had a pretty deep stock of canned goods, coffee, and toilet paper.

[Mominohio]

On 3/1/2015 AuntG said:

Sometimes I wonder if we should buy a generator in case the power goes out for several days. Never really gave it much thought at our first home, but with a finished basement, I'd hate for the sump pump not to be able to work during an outage.

This is exactly why we bought our first generator. We were tired of our basement flooding when there was a power outage during a rain storm. One night, it was almost up to the next level of the house. That was it.

We purchased it really close to the end of 1999, and I'm sure people thought we were preparing for Y2K, but it really was about a flooded basement!