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The recent Delricho or Heap Big
Windstorm is long past now. I hope that some of the lessons we
learned stay with us. I have always been sort of a "prepper", trying
to be a little bit ready for the unexpected, we have for years
always had several gallons of extra bottled water, Pearl & I came
from families that believed in freezing and canning and stockpiling
food. We always tried to have gas in the car, propane in the tanks,
candles and flashlights with good batteries. In the last few years I
have given a lot of thought to more serious preparation. Don't know
how we managed to fill the bathtub with water.
Well guess what, the Delricho came, and with it came a lot of damage
in West Virginia and in Alderson. Trees blown down, electricity off
and phone service curtailed. The McCurdy family did not have a
coffee-pot that we could use. How dumb can one be. When neighbor Lea
Ann came across the street carrying 2 cups of coffee, (she had a
coffee-pot), we were ecstatic. that's No 1!
Like nearly everyone else in the area we were suddenly without Air
Conditioning, we could deal with that by keeping the doors and
windows shut and only opening them in the nighttime. We went to the
porch when the sun went down. We covered the chest freezer with
several old comforters and I used a remote thermometer to monitor
the temperature. We ended up losing everything there was in the
freezers. We were fortunate, I had a full tank of gas in my car, so
we were better-off than many people. When it became obvious that the
situation was only going to get worse, we were able to go to my
sisters home in Lexington for a week. Many did not have those
options.
Folks did not have gasoline, either the supplies were gone or there
was no electricity to work the pumps, propane dealers in many cases
had the same problems. Stores lost their light and refrigeration
systems, the cash registers would not work and Credit Cards were
useless. The Alderson Municipal water plant was unable to pump water
up to the storage tanks and when they ran dry, that was the end of
water until a generator became available.
While on our way to Lexington, the towns enroute were in the same
shape as Alderson, A man in Covington said that Roanoke was out of
generators and gasoline cans, and that the stores were full of
people with fistfuls of money wanting service.
Three days of misfortune and we were able to see how ill-prepared we
were. My guess is that if aid had not been available from outside
the affected area we were only a few days from civil unrest and
anarchy.
I have spent a lot of time deciding what we did wrong or what we
should have done. We lost about $1000.00 in frozen meats. A big limb
blew off of one tree and cost us a $100.00 to remove. While in
Lexington I bought a 5.5 Kw. Generator
and later returned it unopened. I am unsure I need a generator for
the next time, because there has never before been a power outage as
widespread and as long as this one, perhaps I would be better to
just take the occasional losses. I still don't know..
What I do know, we were only halfway prepared. We will store more
water, make sure we have several large containers of gasoline, make
sure we have several canisters of propane for grills etc, in the
colder seasons we will make sure that our large tank of propane is
nearly full, (we have a wall unit in the lower floor and a fireplace
in the Living Room). See that the cars tanks kept topped up, that we
have lots of batteries and kerosene for the oil lamps of yesterday
Oh, and that we have a coffee-pot
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