Thoughts and Things Learned During the Ice Storm

First off, it is nice to have the comforts of electric back. It is easy to take it for granted until it is gone. Notice I did not say needed.



Okay, here we go with some things learned during this little ordeal. Food, water, and heating that we had was sufficient to meet every one's needs, and more or less offer some means of comfort. Temperature was a bit cooler than what we were used to with electric (we used a gas insert) but that was remedied by layering indoors. I will add that in a worse case scenario it would be very wise to have more than one means of heat, i.e. backup generator(standby would be more advantageous than gas or LP powered, but more expensive), extra propane stored for gas stove, some dry wood stored(which we had) just in case...



Food met all nutrition needs and kept anyone from a rumbly tummy and/or intestinal distress. However after about day 3 we all decided that more variety was needed. This will be remedied in the following weeks. I will be looking for several varieties and brands of canned soup, vegetables, dried/preserved/canned meats, "energy bars", candy (for the sweet tooth), and powdered drink mixes.



Hygiene, no problem, we had running water, also had water stored in case water went out. Pretty sure we had enough water for all of us for a full week. I will however be investing in a packable filtration system. Any advice on this would be appreciated, I have looked in the past, but could just not decide. Oh yeah, have powdered soap and a wash board handy, we didn't need to use them, but we had both.



I am sure there is more, but these were the things that stuck with me.



Other things on hand that were not "needed" during this event were: several different modes of transportation (that is to say 4X4 vehicles, atv's and utv's), extra fuel for each, chainsaws, firearms and spare ammo, also a fully portable reloading setup.



Overall it seems that Kentuckians are a rather resilient bunch, as well as self sufficient (I will expound on this more in a later post). Unfortunately there were some deaths in the state associated with this storm, however when you consider that up to 700K were without power with sub-freezing temperatures and as of now only 9 deaths were hypothermia related out of 24 total (hope this number does not go up)[link] I would hazard a guess that we Kentuckians know how to take care of ourselves and each other.