I heard a joke once about why hurricanes are given women’s names. I won’t repeat it here, as it’s too lowbrow for even my blog, but I’m chuckling to myself nonetheless. Fortunately, she only took my silver maple when she left, and cut the power for 4 days.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Helene
I’m no stranger to these weather events, but Ohio is not prepared for hurricanes. Tornadoes, we all collectively know it’s a gamble and if you get hit directly it’s game over, but hurricanes always seem to sneak in and do more damage than expected.
I am not a Prepper, but I am a Something Will Go Wrong-er, so I had some contingencies in place. Still, it’s interesting how quickly things go downhill without power. So, following the cataclysm, I took the opportunity to document a timeline of failure events for future reference. Here’s what I can expect for the next event that cuts off our electricity:
After…
- 2 hours, the UPS will fail and the network equipment will go offline (the internet was out anyway since the cable had been severed).
- 6 hours, the upright refrigerator/freezer will exceed 40 and 32 degrees, respectively.
- 20 hours, the emergency hall lights will fail.
- 48 hours, the cooler (if packed with ice), will exceed 40 degrees.
- 48 hours, the emergency basement light will dim to the point of being unusable.
- 72 hours, the chest freezer will almost reach 32 degrees.
More condensed, these are the priorities:
- Day 1: wired communications will fail and short-term food storage will reach unsafe temperatures. Backup lights will begin to fail.
- Day 2: More backup lights will continue to fail and the cooler will need to be restocked with ice if being used for backup food storage.
- Day 3: Long-term frozen food storage will begin to thaw.
Overall, we made it out with minimal losses, but the area that needs addressing is a backup power supply for the chest freezer. Provided we can source ice, refrigerator food can remain safe in the cooler, but substantial losses would have occurred had we not borrowed a generator. Lesson learned.
I also bought a chain saw.
–Simon