Last week’s windstorm deprived our home of electricity for 14 hours, giving us an opportunity to test our emergency plan.
It’s full of holes.
Going without power for half a day isn’t much of a hardship, barely an inconvenience, but it’s a taste of what could happen in a more severe emergency.
As nasty weather pounds other parts of the country, it’s easy to sit back, enjoy our spring sunshine and gloat. Not that anyone on Vancouver Island would ever do that.
Last week’s storm, though, is a reminder that we are not immune to events, meteorological and otherwise, that can deprive us of the use of our conveniences and disrupt our lives.
Emergency Management B.C.’s website lists some of those events: flooding, weather events, wildland fires, tsunamis, earthquakes, backcountry accidents, wildlife interface, disease outbreaks, landslides, avalanches, hazmat and spills, volcanoes, drought.
Wildlife interface? Odd wording. “Yo, cougar, if you’re finished chewing on my arm, can I have it back? By the way, are you on Facebook?”
Volcanoes? I almost laughed at that one — last time I looked, no steam was rising from Mount Work, and Lone Tree Hill seems dormant to me. Then I checked — our volcanic risk, while not imminent, is real. Mount Baker, which most of us can see on a clear day, is a volcano that last erupted in 1870, and steam can still occasionally be seen rising from its summit.
I’m not going to worry too much about cougars or lava flows, but the items on the list reflect a sobering reality — bad things can happen, and they occasionally do. A few hours without electricity is a cheap lesson on being prepared.
For years, we have been conscious of emergency preparedness, but it’s something that takes maintenance. As dark approached and the lights still didn’t come on last week, we searched for our emergency candles, then realized they had been stored in a garage in a hot climate for a few years. We had thrown out that blob of wax.
I was grateful for a couple of flashlights that can be charged by hand. One has a crank on it; the other is recharged by shaking it back and forth. The first one is a lot of work; the other one worked amazingly well. But I’m going to buy a few inexpensive battery-powered LED flashlights and scatter those about the house.
Government emergency entities advise having a 72-hour kit available for each person — enough food, water and other supplies for three days. As the power outage taught us, it takes governments and utilities time to respond to an emergency and take necessary steps. In a serious disaster, most of us will be on our own for the first few days. Our 72-hour kits were put together at least five years ago. Time to check them over and replace the supplies.
We get our water from a deep well, so minutes after the power went out, we had no running water. We had plenty of drinking water, but not enough for hygienic purposes if the power stayed off. I have several 20-litre water containers for just that reason, and they were still sitting in the garage — empty. Now I’m really serious about filling them, but darn it, the sun is shining, the weather’s fine. No sense in worrying about it until I have to.
We had a sandwich-and-salad supper and the wood stove took off the chill. We couldn’t watch TV, so we watched the firs and cedars become ink-sketch silhouettes against the fading light as the robins and frogs serenaded us.
Thanks to modern gadgets, we could still read. Our landline phone didn’t work, but we had cellphones.
All told, it was a rather pleasant experience, being without power for a while. Another day, though, would have meant some discomfort and much inconvenience.
Next time, it might be more than a few hours without electricity.
