Hey, it's been a major crazy year, but I'd like to share some LTS thoughts from the latest round of flooding we had on the Delaware River (three major floods in less than 2 years!)

Given this is our third time through, we now know just what will happen when you loose infrastructure like roads, electric and phones, and we also know what people tend to need when roads, electric & phones are out!


Fuels Rule
First of all, fuel. In the summer or winter, you need fuel - I've read here that it's called liquid civillization, and that's a great way to put it. With a pending flood, you have the advantage of a bit of time to get it together if you don't have any fuels stored already. We laid in (and used) 100 gallons of gas and 150 gallons of diesel during this last round of flooding. The majority of the diesel fuel was used for a pair of high-capacity pumps (2,500 gallons per minute), we ran them 24/7 for 4 days, pumping out about 28 million gallons of water from the community), the gasoline was used for about a dozen smaller pumps (450-1000 Gallons per minute) ATV's and a Pickup Truck that was used to haul supplies and help with evauations (my pickup truck actually). The point is that establishing a fuel supply is a key LTS issue. In general, the way to handle fuel storage is to have your own "pipeline" of sorts. The way I do it is to have 25 gallons of gas at any given time in five five gallon containers.
Once a week, I dump the fuel from the OLDEST can into my Jeep or Pickup. I IMMEDIATELY put a dose of stabilizer into the empty can and then re-fill that can and put it to the back of the line. It's basic stock rotation, oldest gets used first. Of course, storing that much fuel is a bit of a hazard, mine is stored well away from the house in a small outbuilding.

Water, always water
Water is, of course, a must-have. As we learned over and over, wells get contaminated when there's a flood, so you need a 96 hour supply (or more) of good, clean water. We put in 500 bottles of water at the station, plus the National Guard arrived with 1,000 gallons of what was supposed to be drinking water, but didn't pass the county tests, so we were forced to dump it and get more bottled water. We didn't loose the use of one key road in our out of the community (we lost the use of all the others), so that let us get to the stores to buy water. If the stores were closed, it would have been a problem. Lesson learned: Have your own supply of water, in sufficient quantities to support your needs and the needs of others who may come to rely on you.

Who goes there?
The next issue is unfortnately a bit "hot" but I must report what happened. We live in a low-crime area. So low that we don't even have a police department, we just have the state police. Everyone knows everyone. That said, we had an incident of looting of a home after the evacuation, which shocked and saddened all of us. It also raised the question of security. Your definition of "appropriate measures" will differ from others, suffice it to say that some community members took what amounted to a highly visible and obvious set of "appropriate measures" and there was not another instance of looting. Your mileage might vary.

MEdic!
We had a few patients - one with a cardiac, on member with heat stroke & seizures, some cuts and bruises, and a host of other minor stuff. If you need regular mediacation, lay in a supply of it. We had one call for a resident who, in a flood-safe area, but cut off due to road flooding, needed heart medication urgently. We were able to get their heart meds to them without incident, but if you have meds that have a decent shelf life, investigate if you can lay in a 90 day supply, so you're not stuck if you can't get out for 96 hours.

And while we're talking about 96 hours, that's the number you should have in your head for a natural disaster - 96 hours of autonomy. While we were able to get things stabilized and roads operable in 72 hours this time, it was only because we were exceedingly proactive in calling for (and getting) help BEFORE the flood waters came. If it had been unexpected, say a dam break or ice-dam upriver, and we had less than a day to prepare, it would have been another story.

A few other things:
- Pack a few plastic bags in your spare clothes kit - you can put your wet stuff in the bags. Pack 3-4 pairs of socks for an "overnight kit"
- Put sunscreen in your BOB. Trust me on this.
- You have no idea how useful your leatherman tool is until you drop yours in the river and don't have it on your belt. Fortunately, I had a spare in the glove box of the pickup, but I'll miss that tool.
- Motorola Talkabout Radios with GMRS are very handy, but nowhere near durable enough for any "real" work.
- A Nokia 1100 Mobile Phone, Sold by Tracfone for $19.99 at any number of stores, is the most durable moble phone I've ever used. And the battery lasts DAYS. I put about 800 minutes on that phone, it was in my pocket through all kinds of dusty, dirty conditions,

This is great, many excellent points. AARs always trump "what ifs".

The fuel is the biggest part of LTS that is daunting. Everything else can be stored in a spare room, but gas is expensive compaired to everything else, and dangerous.

I hope you have a good lock on your fuel dump.

yea those cheap lil tracfones do come in very handy <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I have slightly different model. once when i was on a site for work my co-worker couldn't get any signal on his but my trusty lil phone got out .

Martin, a quick question on your Tracfone experience. Phones look great, I actually bought a pair, but when I just called in to start up my service, but they told me it would take 7-15 days to port over my phone number from my current cell phone...is this your experience with it?

According to their customer service, everyone trying to get ahold of me via my current phone number during that period would get a "phone out of service" message - no voice mails being kept, nothing.

I found an FCC Web page that said that porting over cell phone numbers should take 2.5 hours. I couldn't get an explanation from anyone why it would take up to 2 weeks to do this - does this seem weird to anyone else?

Thanks
Dave

Tracfone is funny. They are a parasite provider- they don't own a single tower. Thier deal with the FCC might be a little different than a regular carrier's about migrating an old phone number. I know that most cell providers really dislike Tracfone, so they might be dragging thier feet to show that there are advantages to staying with them, just like the advantage of only being able to talk to thier towers.

But I don't see why it should take that long otherwise.

OK, so I called them back today and got a different guy on the phone and renewed my questions about why it takes so long. He called up their "portablility" dept. and their answer was that it takes longer for them for a series of reasons...because they're prepaid only, and they use GSM phone technology/sim card, and (probably) because as you've said they don't have their own network but piggyback on the system of others, it's a more difficult process for them to port over a number, although they can immediately assign a new number.

So...while I thought I was being smart by changing our numbers to a local area code with our current provider (we moved but kept our old wireless numbers for a long time), it seems that I've only made it a bigger problem...they can offer a "provisional" number, but once they start the request to port over the number, the number's dead for 1-2 weeks, so there's no way to carry two phones in the interim and not miss a call. I haven't seen that bit of info anywhere, and I was searching a lot of online reviews to get that.

That said, I'd so far back what Martin said about this phone (Nokia 1100) being very simple, very basic, and seeming pretty sturdy.

Dave

From this FCC link:

"For a wireless-to-wireless transfer, the porting process should take approximately two and a half hours from the time the porting request is made of the old carrier. The FCC has not mandated a specific time frame for the wireless-to-wireless porting process. Two and a half hours is the time frame agreed upon by the wireless industry, and the FCC encourages carriers to use that time frame." emphasis mine

I wouldn't screw around with porting phone numbers, just use a separate phone number for the cell.

Virgin Mobile is the cheapest, I think. You have to add 20 dollars every 90 days to keep the phone active, but if you don't add it, the phone goes inactive without losing your balance. You now have another 60 days to add the 20 dollars and reactivate the phone (a slightly tedious procedure if you want to use the phone in a hurry, but not THAT big a deal). If you don't do THAT, then you lose the balance, not good. So if you're really cheaping out, you can add the 20 dollars every 5 months instead of every 3 months, total 50 dollars/year. Alternatively you can add a 90 dollar card which keeps the phone active continuously for a whole year. Virgin Mobile uses the Sprint network whose coverage is not the greatest, but Tracphone's coverage isn't so great either.

I never transfer old numbers, I just get new ones, so I don't know what the situtaition with Tracfone is.