We actually have an additional area with storm prep materials that they didn't include in the final piece, given the time limitations, I understand why. We have 12 10' furring strips stowed in between the floor joists of the basement in my workshop - these were added after the tree hit.

They also didn't show:

- Out in the shed are 25 gallons of gasoline (5x5gallon cans) - I rotate these 1x can a month - the oldest (front of the line) goes into my car's tank, I then drive it to the gas station, fill the can and my car, come home and put that can to the back of the line. I do this with the 87 octane gas supply (generator), I also have a 7.5 gallon (5 plain, 2.5 Oil Mixed) supply of 92 Octane for my chainsaws, leaf blower and weed whacker, all of which are Stihl brand and require 92 Octane for Warranty.

- In the closet, not seen in the video, are 2 new chains for the chain saws (one for each of the two saws I have), as well as spare spark plugs for each and spare bars for each.

They also didn't look at the backup-backup power system for the sump pump (71 Amp/Hour AGM Battery & 2000w Inverter, this was in place before - and needed during - the Sandy incident.

Additionally, post Sandy, the phone lines were down for weeks. I got tired of waiting, and finally got rid of our landline wired phone, replacing it with the Home Phone Connect Device . This is a small device, about the size of two blocks of cream cheese side by side, and inside it is a tiny cellular phone, a dialtone and ring-current generator and a few other things, and it replaces your wired landline. It connects to the existing in-home phone wiring, all of the home phones work just the same as before (you hear a dial tone, the phones ring, you dial numbers as normal), but the "backhaul" to the central office is via cellular.


They also edited out some of the stuff about "Storm Cash" - without going into specifics, I did tell them that, as expected, with the telecom infrastructure out of commission, most local stores that could open, opened "cash only" for people they didn't know and trust. I mentioned that we are "ready to get what we need - like gas for the generator - without credit cards" and left it at that. Storm Cash can be very important, managing how you store it is up to you, all I can say is that it's exactly the same as the bottle of bleach in my supply closet - you don't touch it until you actually need it because you can't physically go get some more.

I'm glad that the Red Cross reached out - and I have to say that many of my neighbors up here are at the same prep level as me - and certainly we were all glad for it in hurricane Irene, Superstorm Sandy and a host of other long-duration power outages we've had over the years I've lived here.

Back-up emergency telecom is something we struggled with. Due to family medical needs, 911 is something we really need to have available. Yet, we have experienced outages of both landline and cell phones (local towers lost power). Sometimes one or the other, on one or two occasions, both.

Our solution is diversity: we keep the landline on the lowest level of service allowed (i.e. the cheapest), and DW's cell and mine are on different services, and a near as I can determine, different towers.

Hopefully, at least one will be available if/when we need it.

Where I live, when the tree came down on my house, it was the first of what ended up being hundreds upon hundreds of trees coming down, and not only did it take out our land lines and cell sites, it also took out the back-haul wires from the repeater site that linked my area to the country 911 dispatch center. That meant that the county emergency radio I had was also inoperative except for local (1 mile or less) point-to-point communications. Redundancy is good. We should all do redundancy and offline options for communications. I wish CB radio was still a rational option, it's got rural reach, equipment simplicity, and ultra-low cost, and I don't have to rely on the ham operators to be the "licensed operator" but every time I suggest CB Radio be used in our emergency communications plans, I get a smirk and a "10-4 Good Buddy" smart-a$$ comment.

The next time comms are interrupted, pass around a few, quiet, reminders about how that CB idea from a few months ago would really help right now to the people that made the comments. If that doesn't work, at the following meeting, rub it in HARD.

You are certainly right on re redundancy. That is the only reason I retain land line service. Unfortunately, CB = yahoos spouting gibberish to most people....

just to reiterate... with a simple CB setup, a 1/2 wave Big Stick (vertical) on 20' antenna mast with good ground, a 12vdc power supply and a Cobra 19, I got reliable 10 mile range to similar base station setups.... not too many hills here on the west coast of Florida though...I still have one in my car, and it has been valuable in finding alternative routes in case of a pile up on I-75...

Some 100 years ago, (before cellphones) our state police, at least on major highways, monitored CB. Not anymore. You just see signs giving you the cell phone number to call.

So even with a CB, you can't assume you will reach any EMS/police/fire unit or dispatch center. At best, someone might relay a call for you, but who knows.

In Martin's case, a defined net of emergency responders, all with CBs and with freqs and call signs set up ahead of time, makes good sense, is cheap and easily implemented. Really, IMO almost no reason not to except for the "giggle factor."

For us, if all else fails, I live .6 miles from the local fire-ems station: drive/bicycle/run (well, walk quickly at my age) and bang on the door and hope they are home. . . .

As a side question, would the FRS (family radio service) system be a better alternative to CB, even if only to get past the "giggle factor?"

We're in what's the last "nearly rural" part of Southeast PA - Upper Bucks County. We've got hunting grounds and large state parks and plenty of places where you drive into deep woods to get to homes. The Bucks County Radio system (currently on a digital 500Mhz system, switching to digital 700Mhz system soon) has coverage challenges up here due to the hilly terrain (lots of signal shadowing), digital signal wonkiness, and a simple lack of repeater sites. Additionally, while 700 Mhz propagation solves for some of these issues, there's the basic fact that HF Frequencies (like the "11 Meter" band of CB radio) have reach (outdoors) and you don't need a huge amount of power to get through trees and leaves, and you get all kinds of interesting and wonderful "knife-edging" effects to get over hills. So radio-wise, when we abandoned the 46 Mhz FM system about 12 years ago for the 500 Mhz Digital UHF system. When that happened we lost a lot in terms of coverage and increased - by a factor of 100 - the costs of radio systems.

My township couldn't then and now can't afford to buy new radios on the new new system. An adjoining township is spending over $35,000 to equip two police cruisers and three cops with the new radios. It's expensive.

Over here, where I'm the Emergency Management Coordinator, I'm going into year 8 without any kind of county emergency radio - the one I had during Sandy was borrowed from a Fire Company, and although I still have it, it's not technically for the use of the Township.

The point is a need for local communications. Our main need is radio coverage that is about a 5 mile radius about a point for a cost of nearly free and without needing to wait for anyone with special licenses to show up, if ever.

There are four townships up here that have an implicit agreement to use one of the township buildings as Unified Command during incidents - and reliable communications between the townships and within the township is needed typically on a scale of 5 miles point to point, from any given on-the-ground location. This is backup for the cellular network.

Most of the time, cellular coverage works - although we don't have a nearby Verizon CDMA-equipped tower, there are now several Sprint sites and they share CDMA duties for at least voice and SMS.

Data service is getting better as the area builds up. For GSM, we have only AT&T, and it appears that T-Mobile does not have a roaming agreement with them up here, because I'll get 5 bars of 4G on an AT&T SIM, and 0 bars "Emergency Only" in the same phone with a T-Mobile SIM.

But it's that "plan C" stuff that makes me worry - when the county system is down or overloaded, or the cell sites fail because of poor backhaul infrastructure strategy, I just want to be able to get some communications up and running between maybe 20 people. So that's why I've been thinking CB Radio on Channel 9 as a backup.

I hate drama when it comes to emergency prep and services. I especially hate "Emergency Theater" and the drama and glurge that goes with it.
99% of the world lives every day in our "SHTF" scenarios and while not a nice as our standard of living, they do OK. Not a life I want to live, but it's not apocalyptic.

We all need to learn to CTFD a bit when it comes to emergency prep and stop assuming that the whole world will end if the power goes out for 5 days or if the government shuts down or if some jury delivers some verdict. Ratings-driven ad-supported media has a vested interest in keeping us afraid, angry and believing that the whole of society is one moment away from mad-max anarchy at a national scale. It's not. The supposition of impending anarchy is not just suported by the abundance of evidence to the contrary. The Katrina "anarchy" was largely manufactured by fear. After every storm, every flood, every massive fire, every man-made disaster - the way people and communities, urban, rural and suburban, pull together to help consistently tells us that the fear-mongering is wrong. Follow the money and you'll see why. So given the opportunity to be flat and factual and to have a simple stance that admits I can't - and won't - be ready for everything and that I can and will rely on others for more help - I'll use the same media that manipulates us with fear and loathing to sell more hemorrhoid cream and prescription hair tonic to try to get the word out that you don't have to believe in TEOTWAWKI as imminent to be well equipped.

A temporary reduction in your standard of living hardly qualifies as an "emergency" in my book. Being in a burning, flooding community and having everything wiped out and needing to manage locally with what you have - that qualifies. My stance on emergency preparedness is keep yourself equipped to get on with your own life, wherever you are, so you can be able to help the people who really can't help themselves at the moment.

Leave the drama on Netflix.



Red Cross had a successful deployment at local school during Sandy, and wanted to interview a family that used the shelter. Red Cross contacted school. School Superintendent knows me and family, contacted me.



Yes. They are generally media-adverse. I'm not.




For very short periods of time, yes, as in when I fell off my roof.


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