Preparedness

Ike blew through over the weekend. For some reason, hurricanes like to mosey through Ohio after they make landfall and cause all sorts of photogenic destruction along coastal areas. We got the remains of Katrina, which was just a really impressive rainstorm by the time it made it our way. That's how most hurricanes arrive here: they've blown themselves out hundreds of miles away, and are left dumping all the water. Ike got things backwards. Ike was dry, but still had close enough to hurricane force winds.

We are OK here. The wind blew down some twigs and tossed my neighbor's empty jars of pool chemicals into my yard, but we did not lose power for more than a couple of seconds during the whole ordeal. Judging by the incessant buzz of chainsaws and the local newspaper headlines promising power to 90% of people within a week, we came off this one unscathed

So far, the death toll from the storm is somewhere north of 50 people. To be fair to the hurricane, news media are reporting that many of those deaths are from carbon monoxide poisoning. I'm not sure it is fair to blame the hurricane for people who apparently fail to understand the concept of "Not for indoor use." I do not own a portable generator, but if my waffle iron has to carry the warning label, "Do not use in microwave" (really), I'm pretty sure every generator ever made has "USE THIS OUTSIDE, YOU IDIOT! IT CREATES TOXIC EXHAUST FUMES" plastered over it at least half a dozen times.

Almost as surprising as the number of people who cannot follow simple instructions to position a generator outdoors is the number of people who have had to shelter elsewhere because the power loss has rendered structurally sound homes uninhabitable. For a lot of people--especially city dwellers--the loss of power, even for a week, is an inconvenience. It means no hot water or hot meals, but with enough canned goods and beef jerky (not to mention all the stuff thawing out in the fridge), it is livable, temporarily. Then there are folks like me. I consider electricity an essential for everyday living because without it, not only will the laptop and coffeemaker not work, neither will the faucets. The Rookery is on well water, brought to the house with an electric pump. We lose power, we lose water. The toilets will empty, but won't fill again. Other folks have it even worse off, with septic systems that rely on electricity to move the effluvia from one stage of the system to the next.

Outside of municipal services, such setups are remarkably common. The Rookery is one of 15.4 million U.S households that relies on a private well. Even if we assume an average of only 2 people per household, that is still 10% of the population. One quarter of the population has private septic, and about a third of those are the type that relies on electric pumps. For those of us who rely on electricity to keep our hydration and sanitary facilities running, having a functional generator is the difference between habitable and non-habitable.

That is why I am surprised that permanent standby generators are not more common. Having one installed was the first big thing we did with the Rookery, and it has served us well. A permanent standby generator is a breed apart from the portable ones that get carted out in emergencies and disasters. These are hard-wired into the house and come on within 60 seconds of the generator sensing a power loss to the house, without the homeowner doing anything, including fueling it, since the standby generators hook in to either the natural gas or propane supply to the house. Ours is capable of running about 2/3 of our house as if nothing is wrong--the only things that don't work in a power outage are our laundry room, stove, barn and the lights and outlets in two of the 4 bedrooms. The Big 4 (water, heat, hot water and fridge) all keep humming through any outage, nice as you please.

The standby generators do not come cheap. Ours was about 20 times the cost of a little portable model. That is a small price to pay to know that, as long as our home is standing and not in water, we will always be able to hunker down in it. For us, that seemed like basic emergency preparedness.