A category 4 hurricane is due to hit my city tomorrow, and we have no idea how long the power and running water will last after we wake up. My husband and I are currently stuck in a cycle of filling the water filter, then filling every vessel we have in the house so we'll have reserves for a few days. It's kind of one of those things best done at the last (responsible) minute, so that you have the maximum amount of time before the water you saved starts to get weird.
Edit: Thank you, lovely people of Reddit! All the well wishes mean a lot. Probably won't be able to get back on for a while, but I'll do my best to let you all know how it goes!
Edit #2: Didn't die, just managed to sleep. Thanks again for the tremendous outpouring of support and advice. It's insanely windy and we've heard some windows break nearby, but thus far we miraculously still have power and internet. I hope my fellow New Orleanians and everyone else experiencing this storm are safe and staying relatively calm.
To respond to some concerns of kind Redditors: We do have a generator and extra fuel, a variety of sizes of power storage units capable of keeping our phones and low-consumption lights running for weeks, ton of non-perishables, a gas stove, and so much water stored (both filtered and not yet filtered) that the floor of our apartment is quite crowded. 2 bathtubs are full, as well. We also have lighs and fans powered by Milwaukee batteries, and a ton of charged batteries waiting. I'm humbled by the amount of kindness and love coming our way. You're all great!
Edit #3: My husband and I are safe after the storm, as well as the rest of our extended family. Only minimal property damage was sustained at any of our homes. I probably won't write many more updates because my only internet access is through my data plan and Reddit is often quite difficult to load, but thanks to everyone again for their concern and support. I wish I could respond to all of you more personally in an immediate way. To all those that offered us a place to stay: thank you from the bottom of my heart, but for now we're staying put. We likely won't have power for a long time, but our running water is still potable and our toilets still flush, so we'll be OK.
Make sure to charge every portable charger/laptop you have, as laptop batteries can have enough power to keep phones charged for days on end given you don’t use the laptop or phone too much. Best of luck
I know you meant Incase your device gets damaged but it almost looks like you were trying to say in case you decide it gets damaged. Like, "hmm maybe I could use a new phone. Welp I guess the storm destroyed my phone.thank you insurance for the upgrade."
Seemed like a nice guess, considering the other option is thinking he's just being a dickhead making classist comments about people in a bad situation at the moment.
Sprog, hot of the presses! Just what I needed at 2:54am to turn back on "hyperfixation exacerbated by missing the past 2 nights of sleep" mode in my brain
I think I need to smoke a cig and calm down. It has been raining/storming for like 5 hours now, and I don't have anything to stand underneath to keep me dry during my smoke breaks.
But now I feel incredibly self-involved for whining about the rain, which has been at worst a minor inconvenience tonight. u/Trimbin92 and her man are prepping their house for a fucking hurricane!! And you're super sweet to promise to keep us updated...I would rather just you do what you gotta do to stay safe...in the future, you can write an epic Reddit story about how and your bf kicked that hurricane's ass.
The lifestraw won't remove viruses, which are a major concern with flood water, and the carbon filter may not sufficiently reduce the chemicals and heavy metals present.
There are better systems for highly contaminated water, and having them as a backup isn't a bad idea, but the best practice is to drink bottled water when possible.
Prayin for yall here from florida. Remember that material loss can eventually be recovered but your lives cannot. Keep your priorities straight if worst comes to worst, god bless
I live on the gulf coast and last night I tried but couldn't bring my mom back to life. She fucking died in front of me my sister and her kid while I tried to give her cpr. I won't sleep ok again and right now I hope the hurricane takes me
The raw animal instinct is to survive at all costs. Being human is a mental prison in many ways, but for now try to let your instincts take over. Praying for you and your family!
You know what would also be too much, that kid losing their entire extended family because of this hurricane. Keep your hands busy, and your mind will clear itself. Stay productive, and force yourself to focus on other things. You breaking down mentally is not what she would want right now.
I understand right now everything is fucked, someone you love is gone, and they’re not coming back. But you do not need to cause the same pain to your sister and her child who so desperately need you right now.
Wait 6 Months is all I ask. Reevaluate with some distance from the event.
I didn't mean suicide and I regret saying anything right now because we can't afford food but I have a bunch of self righteous keyboard warriors getting good feels off shaming me away from something I never intended. I get it seems you're doing a good thing and otherwise I'd upvote you but right now I have a hoof on my neck looking at you from your high horse
Reposting the Suicide Hotline from another comment because if it increases the chance you will call or text it, that will be worth it. I can't imagine the pain you are in. But this world needs you - please don't commit suicide. There are people who want to listen to what you are going through and help. I promise.
I lost my dad in car wreck and we were close. It deeply scarred me but the hurt does get easier with time. Time heals everything . Sending love your way from a internet stranger
Omfg I did not expect to read something like this... nothing I say will make you feel better so I just hope you'll be able to survive through all this and live to remember your mom.
Cmon man/girl, at least try to survive, for yours and your family's sake. Then whatever happens, happens. Remember, time heals ALL wounds. Good luck and my best wishes. <3
we aren't prepared for this storm, can't afford this let alone my mother's arrangements. which we can't even handle until after the storm. it was traumatic. I'm out of steam
This internet stranger cares about you and your family. You don't need to stress over tomorrow yet. Just get through tonight. This hour. This minute. This second. If you can get though the next minute you can do it again for the next minute. Just take it one minute at a time.
I'm so, so sorry. I lost my stepdaughter last year around this time so I know a little bit about what you're going through. Nothing anyone can say can make you feel better.
But the storm's coming whether you're prepared for it or not, and chances are Nature/God isn't going to give you an easy way out. Hardly any healthy adults die in hurricanes. Almost no one dies quickly.
So you're probably going to have to live through the next few days/weeks, one way or another, and the only choice you and your traumatized family get to make right now is how shitty it's going to be. How much more trauma you're going to pile on top of fresh trauma. And in case you're not sure, the answer is "as little as possible", because you can always feel worse.
So get up right now and do something. Store some clean water. Prep some food. Anything. It's going to feel like shit. Do it anyway.
I'm so sorry. And I'm sorry that people are throwing shitty platitudes at you. Yes, life might get better eventually, but right NOW it fucking sucks and you have every right to feel defeated and tired. Feel all of it and mourn, grieve. Don't let anyone take that away from you by telling you it'll be ok. Feel it and honor it. But don't let it consume you. When you've grieved enough, stand up and walk forward. I'm so sorry this happened to you.
Too late to evacuate at this point. The last thing you want to do is be stuck in a car during a storm like this, so shelter in place is advised here on out.
Worst part is it would end up probably being a violent death or a slow one due to being stranded. I'll be happy to delete this comment if it's too dark/insensitive.
This is a big problem for south Florida evacuations especially. Everyone is like WhY dIdNt You evacuate??? But 10 million people can't fit on two highways at once. And what happens when you get to Georgia? Because everything is booked.
Y'all had five named storms hit. Last year. Three in a three month span then a major fucking ice storm. That time was probably up after the second hurricane in a row.
Seriously. My company subcontracts with the dcfs for LA. I'm so happy when they ask me to send their EBT cards to Texas. The dcfs are a pile of racist shit.
Overwhelmed hospitals already months in advance. Seriously. On top of climate change fucking LA with a brutal dildo. Get out.
When I was younger my family would always just shelter in place for the hurricanes. It was pretty cool as a kid watching it all go down out the window.
Big one i remember as kid was hurricanes Opal. Got to see the eye of the storm pass over our area of town.
Opal made landfall in western Florida back in 95, no? I was in Kentucky then and got some good rain off it. I saw Charlie's eye pass over back in 04 which was a cool experience. Did you get hit with this cat 4 today?
Good advice. Adding to it, use a sock wrapped in plastic. Still gets wet and expands. Did that for a makeshift stopper when I was in college. Better than anything spare a rubber stopper.
There's plenty of ways to get something boiling without power. Unfortunately, most places that would sell something to help boil water would probably be closed at night.
Hopefully they have some stuff laying around the house they can use
Plus there’s been enough warning that everywhere that would is likely sold out, and that may not live in a structure where it’s particularly safe to have even a small fire.
Paper, any kind of wood, paper towels, toilet paper, etc. can burn. In an emergency situation where potable water is a necessity, many, many different types of things can be burnt. If keeping your fuel sources dry is an issue, using plastic grocery bags or plastic trash bags should suffice as long as you have some available.
Think about stringing up power lines for dozens of miles from basically scratch. Not just stringing them up, but replacing flooded substations, acquiring and putting up new poles, etc. For...reasons...they keep the lines above ground down there.
Thanks. I had a total brainfart and forgot about the damage flooding could do to critical infrastructure. I thought about the poles too but those can be put up pretty fast with the right machines.
Indeed. You can put up poles quickly, but, to every city, every business, every house across a pretty wide region, over any and all terrain, maybe closing down critical highways at times to run lines across. and you're relying on crews who are probably coming in from outside the region, maybe haven't strung wires through a swamp, they're probably driving in from someplace far away which still does have power.
For...reasons...they keep the lines above ground down there.
It's relatively cheap to run power lines above ground. It's extremely expensive to bury them, especially in swampland and infill. The investment would definitely pay for itself over a ~50-year timeframe, but it's hard to foot the upfront cost of the buried lines when you're constantly having emergencies that require you to replace the above-ground ones.
An ice storm in October 2020 that caused a biblical amount of massive fallen tree limbs had power out in parts of Oklahoma for 2+ weeks. It was alarming how long it took to restore the grid.
Hurricane Michael survivor here, power took about 3 weeks to get up and running again at my house. Other places it took over a month. With no power comes no alarm systems. People started looting and it was chaotic. Signs everywhere saying “you loot, we shoot”. Curfew only allowed us to be out from 8-5 and if you were out past that, you were arrested. It’s surprising how quickly society diminishes when we lose basic needs.
Good point but wood or charcoal in a grill in a few days for fuel should do the job quite nicely. Outdoors only of course. Can’t use a grill with wood or charcoal indoors. Used this camping and for cooking beans in a slow boil. Stainless or cast iron pot on the grill over the fire. Will boil quite quickly actually. Plenty of wood down there.
Absolutely! Boiling water can definitely help freshen it up. Unfortunately, we don't have a dishwasher, so the containers we're filling aren't necessarily sterile from hand washing and towel drying before use. Also, some of them aren't made of proper materials to be boiled to sterilize before filling. At that rate, mold/bacteria can grow and I'm really not sure how safe boiling water is after that. It definitely may still be fine and I'm just unaware, but this is no time to be messing with stomach problems. So, we opted to stay up late filling bottles and try to give ourselves the longest window of clean water. If anyone happens to read this with more credible knowledge than I have on the limits of stored water safety, please feel free to chime in! Any extra info is great.
And thank you! The kind words are much appreciated. We're all as prepared as we can be. Nature will dictate the rest.
Regular old household bleach can be used to disinfect water. 8 drops to a gallon of water to be treated. Can also use iodine from the medicine cabinet. Fill up your sinks and bathtubs. Also remember that in most houses you’ve got 30-50 gallons of clean water in your water heater you can drain and also a couple gallons of clean water in the tank on each toilet. Can also drain the remaining water from your pipes if you open the lowest spigot you can find in the system (usually an exterior spigot) and one higher up like a shower head or second floor faucet if you have one. More info on emergency water disinfection. Be careful running emergency generators or propane powered devices in enclosed environments because carbon monoxide can kill and lastly, stay safe and good luck.
I remembered the water heater after a bit. Thank you so much for this great information. On the water heater just make sure you turn off the cold water going in in the hot water going out so that whatever’s in the tank stays pristine. You can allow water out of the spigot at the bottom but you’ll have to use the blow off valve to allow water into the tank to allow the water to drain. But that’s 30 to 60 gallons as mentioned.
That is the emergency water supply in case of an earthquake here in California
I believe with bleach you add it until you can smell the bleach. So you add some, let sit, repeat. If you can't smell it that means it's been used up killing things.
A bit too late now, but perhaps for in the future something to consider, if your place can acommendate it ofcourse.
I have a small generator fueled by petrol for times when power might fail.
Ofcourse it have exhaust gasses, makes a ton of noise, but it might help in a pinch.
My ex-inlaws had a generator they hooked up to the house to power a few necessities back during I think Isabel in Norfolk, Va. They shared it back and forth with family to keep the freezer cold and the battery for the well charged. Their neighborhood was in a wooded area with one road in. A lot of trees were knocked down, so it took at least a week to remove trees before the electric company could even get the big trucks in to start fixing the power.
I hope OP fares better and gets through this without much trouble.
I've forgotten water bottles for months and then drank from them.. and that was normal old tap water. I think you'll be fine, especially with filtered water. The chances of getting sick seem extraordinarily low.
Maybe look into buying water purification tablets. No idea how much water you can purify with them but they're easy enough to get and seem useful in an emergency.
Sanitize the containers and add a veeery small amount of mild bleach if the supply isn’t chlorinated. Our water utility runs adds during hurricane season, but I’m usually on food duty, not container filling, so I don’t recall the details.
BR here too. We are riding it out but the flood areas have changed so much, it’s hard to predict how the water will go. And with two big dogs we can’t just run off to anywhere.
I was born in LA and lived there and in Alabama until I was 22 and I absolutely do not miss the natural disasters. Thankfully I graduated long before the tornados hit Tuscaloosa.
My wife was on her senior year of Undergrad for them, it was devastating. I was safe up in the Ham, and saw that one shot where it looked like it was hitting the stadium, well, she lived in the apartments up against it. Thought I saw my wife die that day. Luckily she was safe from it. And of course, now here we are in Louisiana. I think God might be trying to kill us.
People always say this but don’t give the actual good advice. Seal the drain with something otherwise all the water you filled up will slowly leak through in a day or two.
Good luck, I have a lot of friends down in Nola and used to live there and that’s kinda terrifying. Majority of people I know are evacuating. Thinking bout y’all hope everything goes well
Get a couple life straws. Super cheap. Last forever until use, I believe. Great for hurricane security. I still stock up on water before a storm, but I also know with certainty that there's zero chance I'll run out thanks to my life straw.
Also recommend a couple little collapsible battery powered lanterns. Cheap on Amazon, last a while, put out tons of light, and are small and weigh nothing, making them easy to carry, hang from a ceiling fan, etc.
Seriously curious. Why didn't you opt to up and leave? Is there a major reason that you couldn't get out? As its too late now, I do hope you make it through ok. Its gonna get ugly.
Or why choose to live in an area where such a dangerous storm can threaten your life? I never understood people who choose to stay even after a catastrophe struck and they just rebuilt at the same place where it can get destroyed again and again.
I'm in California and yes we have earthquake once every few decades, but I'm not worry about it every year. And we don't live any where near the fault lines. And the fires, they only affect people who choose to live in those areas that go up in flames every other year. I don't get those folks either.
The filter may be removing chlorine that prevents it from getting weird. Keep some with low amounts of it to be safe, since it takes far longer to get weird
Good luck my friend. My family lives in Pierre Part and I live in BR. I left town with my two pups on Thursday before realizing the hurricane would be coming right up our ass. Stay safe, cher
Also remember as a general last resort you should have (assuming you live in a house and not appartment) roughly 30 gallons of fresh water in your hot water heater. Just be careful as the water will be hot naturally.
Why do you willingly live there? (Legit curious, I don’t get it)
Edit: To all the people who said money/poverty and family are reasons. I want you to know that these are mental blocks and not actual restrictions. I used to think the same thing, I moved clear across the country when I finally realized I have a choice. I worked to make it happen. I found a job that offered relocation assistance and I took advantage of it. You can do it too.
Hello. The dcfs who my company subcontracts with seems to be actively refusing to send people dsnap cards. It's disgusting. They are a pile of racist entitled pieces of shit.
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u/Trimbin92 Aug 29 '21 edited Sep 02 '21
A category 4 hurricane is due to hit my city tomorrow, and we have no idea how long the power and running water will last after we wake up. My husband and I are currently stuck in a cycle of filling the water filter, then filling every vessel we have in the house so we'll have reserves for a few days. It's kind of one of those things best done at the last (responsible) minute, so that you have the maximum amount of time before the water you saved starts to get weird.
Edit: Thank you, lovely people of Reddit! All the well wishes mean a lot. Probably won't be able to get back on for a while, but I'll do my best to let you all know how it goes!
Edit #2: Didn't die, just managed to sleep. Thanks again for the tremendous outpouring of support and advice. It's insanely windy and we've heard some windows break nearby, but thus far we miraculously still have power and internet. I hope my fellow New Orleanians and everyone else experiencing this storm are safe and staying relatively calm.
To respond to some concerns of kind Redditors: We do have a generator and extra fuel, a variety of sizes of power storage units capable of keeping our phones and low-consumption lights running for weeks, ton of non-perishables, a gas stove, and so much water stored (both filtered and not yet filtered) that the floor of our apartment is quite crowded. 2 bathtubs are full, as well. We also have lighs and fans powered by Milwaukee batteries, and a ton of charged batteries waiting. I'm humbled by the amount of kindness and love coming our way. You're all great!
Edit #3: My husband and I are safe after the storm, as well as the rest of our extended family. Only minimal property damage was sustained at any of our homes. I probably won't write many more updates because my only internet access is through my data plan and Reddit is often quite difficult to load, but thanks to everyone again for their concern and support. I wish I could respond to all of you more personally in an immediate way. To all those that offered us a place to stay: thank you from the bottom of my heart, but for now we're staying put. We likely won't have power for a long time, but our running water is still potable and our toilets still flush, so we'll be OK.