I live in a pocket of geographic/geological oddness the makes where I live both rural (lots of people have backyard firing ranges, we have no sidewalks, uber, streetlights or police department) and not-so-rural (there's a CVS store 10 minutes from home, there's a small town 15 minutes away with several fancy coffee shops, I have really expensive gigabit internet now).

In terms of preparing for long-term emergencies, it's mostly about power outages for us, because we have a water well & septic pump, so no power=no water. We use a 6,500 watt portable generator feeding a transfer switch, it does not run the whole house (in particular, it does not power the electric water heater), but it does keep the "critical" systems going.

One thing that has changed in how we handle preps now as compared to maybe 10 years ago is we're less likely to fire up the generator now - we get service restoration faster than we used to, it's rare to have an outage of more than maybe 12 hours. We now rely on Anker brand jumpstart packs to keep our phones and laptops charged up; LED lights have gotten so much better that we only need a few of them to keep the house lit and smaller critical loads running.

But I think that the biggest change in our storm preps is the shift from a gas-powered tools to battery-powered tools. The chainsaw was first to change. I made the switch after one of the local fire stations ditched their gas powered chainsaw on the ladder truck in favor of a Milwaukee M18 Fuel 16" chainsaw - and I loved it. This was after the station I'm with bought a set of Hurst battery powered extrication tools ("Jaws of Life") and I took apart 1.5 cars without needing to swap batteries. My "fear of batteries" is over.

I got the "Oregon" brand 40v chainsaw (which has a LOT in common with the Lowes 40v line), and it's been great both for ordinary cleanup of fallen limbs and such as well as the occasional logging of larger trunks. It's not ideal for all-day-long slicing up of trees into rounds for splitting, but that's not what I'm doing in a "tree in the road" situation.

So, all in all - batteries are the way for me now, and the less gas I have to mess with, the better.

Nice!

The advent of good quality lithium batteries changed everything. I have been a fan of battery sawzalls for all the small wood cutting jobs. Matched with a good arbor blade, it's amazing what you can do.

I used cheap Ryobi sawzalls with 4.0Ah batteries for years, and I have to say they served me well. Recently, I picked up a brushless Makita sawzall and a bunch of 4.0Ah batteries on a good deal -- more muscle when I'm taking apart a tree at the top of a 30' ladder.

Sure, I have a big gas Stihl for big jobs, but I only use it now and then.

We had a big windstorm last week and a huge poplar tree came down on the road in our neighbourhood. I didn't have gas mixed for the Stihl, so I grabbed the Makita sawzall and walked down. By the time everybody else showed up with chain saws, I had chopped up the tree and the road was clear for traffic. That included some 16" cuts.

Did you ever have a moment when you learned something so “obvious” that you want to smack your head with a big fish?

It did not occur to me, until you posted this, that my battery recip saw should be considered a major part of the storm cleanup supplies. I know, I know, incredible miss on my preps mindset.

The good thing is I have SO MANY batteries for my cordless tools always on charge.

So this morning I picked up a collection of blades for the recip saw - pruning, metal cutting, etc. and put them in the “Emergency Supplies Only” cabinet.

Good thinking.

I do like the quiet and relative safety of the recip saw / sawzall. I have seen scary stuff when inexperienced people try to use a chain saw. But I can teach someone to use a recip saw / sawzall in a few minutes. Even DW can handle one. They can also be used one handed if necessary.

Agreed!

I have taken formal chainsaw safety training and I will use a recipro saw for 100% of the jobs it's capable of. I'm VERY cautious of chainsaws.

Is the formal chainsaw safety training worth doing for us average folks? What topics are covered?

Sadly, a tree cutter (supposedly trained professional) lost his life in Louisiana back in January after a chainsaw accident (upper extremity). I think he died on the scene.

https://www.myarklamiss.com/news/ouachit...verely-injured/

If you think you will ever operate a chainsaw in your life, then yes I would recommend the one day class I took. It was offered by a local fire department to my CERT. I would take it again in a second.

I got basic chainsaw training for ERT and advanced training by professional tree cutter instructors as I was one of the desiganted chainsaw operators. It was really worth it.
The topics were basic safety, basic operation, cutting and felling techniques and the advanced training also covered coping with dicey situations that are prone to kill people.
Two pieces of advice:
- get some proper PSE
- don´t graduate on the Youtube university for that. There is a lot BS out there that can get you killed