Lesson #1 Not all Grocery stores have generators.

Lesson #2 Even with a Generator If it pops a fuse It may not have emergency Lighting.

Lesson #3 Its 100% Pitch Black in a Grocery store with No power Or Emergency Lights.

Lesson #4 Lending Flashlights May result in not getting them back (Gotta Retrieve 2 flashlights sigh)

Lesson #5 A Quark AA2 Will Light up a Grocery store like its the Friggen Sun.

Lesson #6 There are apparently Generators the size of big rigs capable of 100% powering a entire grocery store and that includes all the refrigeration.

Lesson #7 Shoveling Sucks

Lesson #8 Being Prepared will lead to Oohs and Ahhs when your Lil Pocket Flashlight Lights up half the Huge store.

Lesson #9 Never Again will I go without a Light source on my person.


So In Conclusion When you Hear there may be 1-2 feet of snow in late october dont right it off as BS. Many people In light weight hoodies and easily soaked sneakers with just cellphones with light app's.

Also In the Dark There is little to no coordination between even the smallest groups of people, Rely On No one and watch your lended out gear like a hawk.

Ain't that the truth -- Great flashlight.

I can assure you That flashlight did not leave my hand. NO one was gonna walk home with it like la dee da oh well like they did with my LED 2AA Mini Mag and Streamlight Stylus pro.

looks like the first reports are coming in..in Minneapolis we had one of these early,very heavy snow storms back in the mid 80's and it stayed on the ground until May,i think,that year.i wonder if the East Coast will have a fast melt and winter floods?

Don't loan your gear unless you don't want it back (in one piece), that's something you learn quickly.

I have a AAA on my keychain (a ReVO) in addition to my Quark 123. We had a power outage while the tornado sirens were sounding so I was able to hand my oldest one flashlight to get one of her little sisters into our designated tornado shelter room while I used the other flashlight to get the other one.



Nobody returns flashlights during power outages. I keep about a dozen fauxtons on hand to give away.

I often find that lending out materials is never a good thing. One of the tricks I do is keep "disposable" materials that I can give away and not freak out when I loose them. I used to carry a small set of three throwing knives, I never threw them in my life, but I did lend them out for eating when I would go camping.


Often in situations like that you learn how unprepared people are for small SNAFU's like that.

It sounds like you had a successful venture while you did loose some materials; you learned a lot of lessons and probably taught a lot of people. Now I have to go lookup this flashlight you talked about lighting up the store like the sun..

Grocery stores without power were very common in South Florida in the years before Francis, Jeanne, and Wilma. Some of that has changed voluntarily and with new building codes. The Publix (popular grocery chain in Florida) closest to my house has one of the huge megawatt generators you described following being out of power for a week in 2005. Our emergency preparedness organizations have published maps showing both grocery stores and gas stations with backup power. Might be worth the effort to see if such maps are published for your area.

Ditto that for gas stations.

Our lights are out until "as late as Friday" (as in the 4th) - they went out at 1:43 PM Saturday. I have a stash of gas - I used to keep 25 gallons, that dropped to 15 for a while, I'm settling on on a rotating stock of 20 gallons.

Gas station lines were pretty epic at the one place where the lights are on. No gas cans to be had at the stores either. Saw entirely too many people putting gasoline into yellow Diesel or blue Kerosene containers.

They also ran out of coffee cups and people were yelling at the staff because of it (it's one of those mini-mart places).

We had some extra kids on an unexpected sleepover because of the storm's impact and subsequent road closures from wires and rees down. While the trees were snapping and breaking all over the place (I suffered huge losses on my ornamentals as well as my other trees) we enjoyed watching a "Mr. Bean" movie and munching on popcorn.

Plenty of water, plenty of butane for the portable stove. Warm fire in the fireplace and 4 cords of nicely split hickory & maple.

Only downside is the generator is both noisy and can't power all of the electric appliances (hot water, electric stove, oven & dryer) at once. Not 100% sure if I care, maybe about the oven, maybe not.

Anyway, I hate to be so darn smug, but THIS IS WHY WE PREPARE.

Counting what's in the gas tank and cans, I have fifteen gallons set aside for my generator, all with Sta-Bil mixed in. That should give me about four days continuous operation at 50% load. My plan is to run the generator intermittently and get a week or two without needing to siphon the cars or get to a gas station. I do have a hand pump to move gas out of the cars if I have to. Sta-Bil says that treated gas is good for a year, my plan is to rotate it every six months.

How do you store your 20 gallons? I'm using plastic Blitz cans, stored in a corner of my garage away from the door to the house and away from the sump pump. My hot water heater isn't in the garage.