Another day, another drunk, another drill

The star of the show this morning.

The stars of the show last night.

So last night yet another drunk hit yet another power pole in our neighborhood. That's one thing that's predictable about wine country: When you live in an area that produces something alcoholic as its primary crop, you will attract people who like to consume alcohol as their primary nutritional crop. With expected results: Knock down a power pole. Flee the scene. Rinse and repeat.

But these 10 - 14 hour power outages provide a great opportunity to see how my disaster relief skills work, especially if I'm on my own. Big Ag was on a business trip yesterday in Oregon, so when the drunk hit the power pole, it was about 7:30 pm and I was here by myself. 

And I soon realized that I did not have enough familiarity with 1) manually opening the automatic garage door while also (more importantly) re-engaging it so it was locked afterwards, so I could 2) drag the generator out and start it with no light and no one to hold a flashlight for me so I could see.  And let's not even start with trying to find all the flashlights, candles, hurricane lamps and lighters after the power had already left me in darkness. 

It turns out, the battery-operated candles I keep next to my bathtub for ambient lighting were my best friend in the first few minutes after the outage, since they just needed just the flick of a switch to light up and were out in the open and easy to find. They allowed me to search for and find all my other emergency equipment. 

And did I mention they are vanilla scented candles? No reason to ride out the apocalypse without aromatherapy.

So looking back on the 14 hours with no power, I got some things right and some things definitely need improving.

First, props to me for:

1) having enough oil in the hurricane lamps, and having them in an easy-to-locate space, plus knowing exactly where the battery-operated candles were.

2) I had all the wax candles in one area.

3)  I easily found the lighters.

4)  I knew enough about the generator that I could at least start it once daylight came around.

5) I was also able to bring in numerous solar lights from outside, as well as having tea lights, to light up the less important areas of the home.

So all that was good. But a scowl and wag of the finger at me for:

1) not being familiar enough with the generator to start it in the darkness.

2) not knowing how to re-secure the automatic garage door after opening it manually.

3)  not having candles, lighters, lamps and oil in ONE place, so there was only one place I needed to go in the house to find everything I needed. And also for not having lighters with the candles, and another with the hurricane lamps.

4) not knowing where the gas can was for the generator (luckily it had a fair amount of fuel already in it so I did not need to add more).

5) not keeping my devices fully charged. A 100 percent charge on my phone and Kindle would have been nice, not just for emergency calls and messages, but also for entertainment while I waited for the power to come back on. I DID have a mobile charger, which was great, but instead of having to use it on 50 percent charged devices it would have saved power on that to have everything on a full charge to begin with.

6) not having other things I'd need in a real emergency, like tools, conveniently located and close by. A true disaster is no time to have to head to the barn to look for the right wrench to shut the gas off.

On sale at Walmart, this looks like a good idea....

But these might be symbolically more correct. Wine Light, anyone?

My biggest plan for the future going forward is to invest in things that will light up the house immediately -- namely, battery-operated, "flick of a switch" lighting like small lamps, plus more good, LED flashlights, placed in EVERY ROOM of the house, including spare bedrooms and bathrooms.  And better organization so that all those things are close to each other and easy to find. But the lighting especially needs to be present and easily located in the first few minutes of any emergency so you can then see what you're doing, whether it's placing candles around the house, shutting off water or gas (in a true emergency) or starting the generator! 

Obviously, if disaster hits in the daytime, you hopefully have several hours before darkness comes. But I've noticed that disasters, like drunks, tend to want to show up at night, so it's best to be ready for that probability.

I learned a lot from this little preparatory drill and will be making some improvements in the next few days. 

How ready are you for a real disaster?

Meanwhile, East of Eden

"The water came in a 30 year cycle. There would be five to six wet and wonderful years when there might be 19- 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass. Then there would come six to seven pretty good years, with 12 - 16 inches of rain. And then the dry years would come..."

                                       John Steinbeck, "East of Eden"

Steinbeck summed it up pretty accurately, and so here we are in the midst of one wet and wonderful year, with the only detractor being that with so many dry years in a row before this, the land is scarcely capable of holding all this water.

Dry creeks filled with drought-killed trees are flooding for the first time in years and carrying the debris downstream. Sinkholes of formerly parched earth are opening up underneath the streets in southern California and swallowing cars whole, and 40 year-old trees are finding that even harder than surviving the droughts, surviving the deluge that comes after the drought is even more impossible.

And so it is in my neighborhood. Yesterday we had an astonishing 15 inches of rain on our hilltop, thanks to three micro-bursts which caused literal walls of water to fall around us. 50 mph wind gusts took out five of the neighbor's trees, narrowly missing our property.

The community effort which occurred immediately after these tree falls was nothing short of amazing; in less than 15 minutes there were at least 10 neighbors, half with chainsaws, hacking off branches, stacking logs and clearing the road. It was heartening to see, and made me realize what a wonderful neighborhood we live in.

But as a result of so many trees in the area coming down, we also lost power for about 12 hours on a very chilly and windy day. I sent Big Ag a text with one word:  GENERATOR. We've been bickering over the last several years about whether or not we needed one, and thankfully (or not) Mother Nature saw to it that a combination of necessity and comfort won this argument.  

So that night, we cooked dinner indoors, had a lamp on and ran our pellet stove until we were warm and our bellies full. I am as proud of that new generator as I would be of a Mercedes -- prouder even, because it's much more practical for where we live and we'll probably have it longer than we have any car we currently own. 

Today the power is back on and the cleanup has begun all over the state as we slog our way through this "wet and wonderful" year, ever mindful that too much water is still preferable over not enough. We'll take the downed trees, flooding and power outages over endless sunshine any day of the year. Because just like Steinbeck points out, the dry years are always coming.

Just not today.

Powering a homestead

one off-grid energy option...no power

This time of year always brings with it a certain dilemma...do I hang wash outside, or use my energy-hogging electric clothes dryer inside?  You see, even though we live on the Central California coast, in the land of rhone wine grapes and sunshine, we still get more than enough winter days of "marine layer" cloudiness and short days, when there's a distinct lack of dry and/or warm air about.  There have been plenty of days recently when I dutifully hung the wash in the morning, then pulled it in at around 4:30 pm (sunset in these parts), still damp.  Talk about a waste of personal time and energy.

These days also have me thinking about finally buying a generator, now that my husband has his Christmas bonus in hand and we can afford it.  In summer, we could easily live without electricity -- the days are warm and sunny, but the nights are always cool, which makes the house a pleasant temperature most of the time; we have a solar oven and a 3,000 gallon tank of water which is gravity fed into the house if the well fails -- but winter is another story.  Again, we bust through yet another California myth:  Not only is there not eternal, warm sunshine, it also gets damn cold here in winter, especially at night, where it often freezes.  That's not North Dakota cold, but it is cold enough to make a long night much longer, if you have no pellet or wood stove, fireplace, or central heating to help you through.  

another off-grid energy option...limited power

Anyplace where it's down in the '20's or teens and you're in an emergency situation, you can always survive by putting everyone to bed in an extremely small room, sealing the doors and windows securely, and letting your combined body heat warm the room.  With only three of us here full-time, it would work.  But the question becomes....who would want to do that if there were another option?  It's a last resort, at best, suitable for only the worst survival situations. For us, another other option is a gas or propane generator, capable of running the fan on the pellet stove and therefore heating much of the house up before we retire each evening.  

I know it's odd that I loathe using an electric clothes dryer and regularly imagine scenarios where we actually have to do everything without electricity (in which case the clothes would remain on the clothesline for two or three days in winter until they finally got dry).  The fact is, I like having  back-ups in place to grid-dependent appliances -- and knowing how to use them, because what you think is never gonna happen seems to have a way of happening, even if only for awhile.  When the 1971 Sylmar hit near my childhood home, our power was out for four days.  Not an eternity, but long enough.

And if you need to imagine a closer scenario, how about Hurricane Sandy.  There are some folks that are still without power from that storm, almost two months later.

Another off-grid option.. really expensive power.

I freely admit I also hate giving an ever-increasing amount of money to PG&E each month, but I'm not sure solar panels or wind turbines would either a) make us more independent or b) save us money in the long run. The most expensive type of system is one in which you're off-the-grid most of the time and storing power in batteries, but have grid capability should you need it.  Those batteries I just spoke of cost a fortune, as does the technology that make it possible to charge them.  But with all that technology comes dependence of another sort -- on repairmen and parts shipped from far away, since no technology will work forever without need of replacement parts. 

So today I will use the electric clothes dryer....because I can, and tomorrow I will go out and buy a generator, because someday I may need it.  And when it's warm I'll hang  wash outside and use my solar oven, and when it's raining I'll stay inside and use my household appliances.  Right now it's the best of both worlds, but should one of those worlds become dominant, I'm hopeful I'll be able to function in either of them.