[color:"green"]Lessons from the Seattle Power Outage[/color]

It's been some weeks now, and it was hardly a "survival" scenario, but I learned a few things from my week without power and thought I'd share a few thoughts.

We lost power due to a wind storm - 700,000 people - roughly half the greater Seattle area, I suppose - had no power. Seattle has a mild climate, but after about 48 hours without power the house was down to 41 degrees – same as outdoors. After 6 days 70,000 were still without power and I was one of those fortunate few.

During those first two days a wide enough area was without power that it was virtually impossible to buy gas – all the areas that did have power quickly sold out. However the grocery stores all had generators for minimal backup power – not the big freezers – and were selling everything they could.

Lesson #1 Technology requires electricity, and sometimes DSL or cable access!
"Who knows the emergency number any more? Not me or my cell phone! I'll just check the web if anything goes wrong..." Of course, you cannot check your workplace’s web page about adverse weather if trees took out your power, cable, and phone lines. Even if you had a generator...

Some of my friends don't have "land lines" any more - and when their cell phones died they were out of luck.

Lesson #2 Something unexpected WILL go wrong – even if it’s only minor
I didn’t have a battery powered radio – or rather, I did, but I didn’t know where it was. On the first morning of the outage I had no idea how widespread it was, so I tried to go in to work. Big mistake. The whole east side was out. The night before my fuel light had come on, but I hadn’t filled the car - figured I'd do it in the morning. After all, even if we lost power (as we often do here) most places would have it. Wrong. No one could pump gas, and no traffic lights were working which REALLY slowed the morning traffic. My 12-mile-or-so commute took forever (well over an hour), burning virtually all of my remaining gas, so I had to abandon the car once I got to work or risk running completely out of gas, clogging the fuel filter, etc. On a happier note, I had arranged ahead of time for this possibility, and so had a ride out of there (work had no power).

Lesson #3 Have a battery-powered radio – but don’t depend on the radio stations
Because the city of Seattle itself has many fewer trees, and probably more buried power lines – the core of the city was much less affected than the “outskirts” such as Bellevue, Redmond, etc. In practical terms, what this meant was that as I attempted to drive in to work the radio stations – all based in Seattle where people were still experiencing the benefits of alarm clocks, hot showers, traffic lights, etc. – made virtually no mention of the CHAOS on the east side of Lake Washington in Bellevue, Redmond, etc. where virtually no one had power. Sure, Bellevue is a pretty far cry from NY or LA, but it’s hardly a backwater – some concern for the half of their listeners further than 5 miles from their broadcast towers would have been appreciated.

Lesson #4 Thou shalt stockpile appropriate batteries – particularly D Batteries
You could easily find AA. You couldn’t find D - or most others. Batteries went fast and everything but AA stayed gone for a long while. Only this past week have I seen D cells return to grocery stores. Fortunately I had a good stock of batteries.

Lesson #5 Car chargers can be a godsend
From a cell phone to a gameboy, at least you have a bit of power.

Lesson #6 Me No Know… How Make… [color:"red"]Fire[/color]
As someone who has read this site on and off for over a year, I thought I had fire covered. Not that I believed I was a master, by any means, but I figured I knew how to put one together, and I had the tools. However I discovered my “book learnin’” wasn’t worth much when my first attempt to start a fire with dry firewood, indoors, in a fireplace, with newspaper and a lighter – failed. My only excuses are that this was my first fire of any sort, ever – being a city boy who’d only camped with white gas stoves and lighters – and that my second attempt worked fine. Clearly, wet wood, in wind, with a match and I would have been in trouble – I guess I’m going to have to spend a weekend sometime getting some practical experience.

Lesson #7 Tolerance for cold and discomfort varies… WIDELY
I didn’t mind that the house was 41 degrees. I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t mind it. On day five with no power – despite the ability to spend the day at work with power, heat, and shower, my fiancée declared we’d be spending the remaining powerless days with friends whose power had returned. She was upset and uncharacteristically assertive on the issue. I hadn’t expected this response – and it just goes to show that even people you know well (or you yourself) might react unexpectedly in a “crisis.”

Lesson #8 Regarding Generators
I didn’t have one. Now I do. I cleverly purchased it - once I finally found one - about 6 hours before our power was finally restored. I'm so clever.

I decided minimalism was the best choice here. While I considered a generator in the 6,000 watt range, doing the "gas math" made me change my mind.

Many generators, like a top-rated model in consumer reports, could sustain 6,200-,6300 watts – which is more than three full 15 amp circuits. With that you could run quite a lot of stuff. However, such generators run about 13 hours on 7 gallons at half load. At 80% load it runs about 7 hours on 7 gallons.

If I’m usually running at half load, why buy a 6,300 watt generator (even if it does have over 8,000 “starting” watts)? But let’s say I do run at half load, and that I want to run it about 12 hours per day. That’s about 7 gallons of gas per day. Which is 49 gallons – let’s round to 50 – if I want to be prepared for a week without power. If I want to run the generator 16 hours a day at 80% load I need over 100 gallons for a week. I’m sure somebody, somewhere, knows how to store that much gasoline safely for a long time, but I sure don’t.

Furthermore, such generators weigh around 200 pounds, and even with wheels, I’m not convinced my fiancée could easily handle moving one around if I were out of town – as I was during the week-long “snow storm” in early December.

(You’ve really got to use quotations marks around terms like “snow storm” when you’re talking about Seattle. However, it’s legitimate to be concerned because even a small amount of snow here can really isolate you fast, especially if you live in a somewhat outlying area. There are no plows, people don’t know how to drive in it, cars are abandoned and further block roads, emergency services are spread thin, etc. But if your neighborhood spills out onto the “main” 2-lane road via a steep hill with a sharp curve at the bottom as ours does (wonderful design!) then you can be fairly well stuck for a few days if that ices up and you don’t happen to own a Land Rover with snow tires.)

I picked a 2,000 watt generator (really around 1,600) which can only handle about one circuit, but I get four hours out of a gallon of gas at maximum load. For 12 hours of use for 7 days I’d need 24 gallons or less. I’m likely to stick with two five gallon cans of gas and plan to minimize my usage – some power is a LOT better than no power. And if I follow-up on picking up a kerosene or other “safe” indoor space heater I won’t need electricity for that.

It’s also less than 50 pounds and can fit in an average car trunk.

Lesson #9 The flashlight you’ll carry is the one you’ll use
I’ve collected various lights over the years. I had some decent long-lasting lights designed to spread light out in a room which were useful in the dark evenings. In general, however, I found a lot of our lights to be nearly worthless. Large lights? Awkward to carry around, heavy, would leave them behind in some situations, etc. Head lamp? I’m sure I could find a better one, but mine didn’t want to stay on my head and gave me a headache (despite loosening the strap) after about an hour of wear. What I really used, kept on me, and worked well were lights about the size of one of those Maglites which takes 2 AA – although these were LED lights which took CR123A (of which I have many on hand). I could set it down pointing upward to temporarily bounce light off the ceiling while I did some task with two hands and I kept them in coat or pants pocket when I was in a room with light, so I had them at hand. They were the ones I used and the ones I didn’t want to do without.

Lesson #10 Cold food sucks
Our house has no gas. As I mentioned I had no generator. I had no butane camping burners or other such stoves. I don’t even own a BBQ grill (not that I could have found charcoal to put in it after the first 12 hours). I could have tried to cook awkwardly over the fire in the fireplace, but mostly ate cold food. Yeah, you can survive on cold canned stew quite well – just don’t plan to enjoy it.

Bonus Lesson #11 Pets can be affected by “disasters”
I have two big fluffy dogs (picture Samoyeds, but not white) who probably thought it was fun the house wasn’t so darn hot that week. But I know people with small short-haired cats and dogs, and I’m not sure exactly what they did...

I hope this is of some interest or value to others. The experience has been of value to me – After reading this site for the past year or so, I had done some minimal preparedness (throwing some useful stuff in my car, having extra food and water on hand at home, putting whistles on our keychains, etc.) but I’m now much more motivated to do more detailed planning and prepare a bit more thoroughly.

So thanks to everyone who's aided my education.

Hey Chef- Awesome, and thorough, write-up! Glad you came out relatively unscathed and learned some good lessons.

Jason

Nice writeup, and well worth the read. Is your generator one of the Honda EU series? If so, be aware you can hook two of those together for 4000/3200 watts.

Thanks for the read! Well done. It is always interesting to see how people use their skills, tools, and how it shapes future planning.

BTW, are you laying in a small camp stove? <grin>

On another note, I've read a lot of planning for people in these forums (and others), but emergency prep for one's animals is usually lacking. Were you able to find food, etc? Does your vet have any sort of emergency plan?

Excellent first post. I grew up in a farmhouse north of you in the 50's/60's. Knowing how to start a fire safely is sorta second nature and having lots of firewood stacked outside was nothing special. While visiting at my parents house about ten years ago a cold wave was forecast so I naturally made sure firewood was available (lots) and the woodstove in the basement was cleaned and available (new stove, you can cook on it). Mom asked me to start it up and that woodstove heated the house on its own. Mom had stopped using it because she wasn't up to hauling firewood, but that stove was awesome. So while I was home, that was my job <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

As for letting your car get low on gas. . . I suppose you own that lesson now. I'm in SOCAL, and I don't ever get below 1/2 tank day-day. Driving distance it goes to 1/4 but by then I really need a pit stop anyway. Living in an urban sprawl with all the services can give you some bad habits.

Ditto the Honda EU line from the post below. They're designed to synch up. Then you can run one or both and for logistics, you can carry your 4KW generator 2KW at a time and two will store easier than one large gen set.

Batteries: My other half was always going through AA batteries while I had stuff that needed D's but rarely used them. So I transitioned to AA's (flashlights and radios) and keep them stocked. She keeps the batteries rotated. I keep fresh D's in my big Maglites, but I don't maintain a big stock.

As for cooking, I have a propane cookstove and a 20# bottle in the garage. Propane doesn't go bad. Get a 20# bottle (or two) and a propane campstove with the adaptors for a large bottle. Being able to cook is good. Then again, if you own your home, consider replacing that nice looking fireplace with a woodstove that can really pump out heat and has a flat top to cook on. Just a thought.

Enjoy, if you live in Seattle long enough, it will happen again.

Nice writeup. We want to get a propane-power generator for our house. The only time-critical utilites we get are electricity and telephone. Our cell phones are backups for the telephone, but we have no backup for electricity.

What kind of dogs do you have? We have a samoyed and a very large keeshound (think a black & gray samoyed).

Something else to consider adding for not a lot of money is a few propane lanterns. I have 2 that I use when camping and alwys make sure I have a few extra bottles of propane.
More than once they've come in handy during power outages. Make sure that when using them indoors keep them away from flammable curtains etc and crack a window to help with ventilation.
Great wrtie-up. Has me thinking about some things I need to do.

Welcome Chef.

It sounds like you learned a lot thanks to that week. You now want to remember it for the future. What you do not want to do is become complacent, and next time look like those folks in hurricane country that, EVERY time a big storm is coming, have to fight for bottled water, batteries, etc.

The post about propane stoves is a good one. You can get a long hose to run from cylinder to stove at most RV supply stores, so that you can leave the cylinder outside and cook inside. There are also large propane heaters available for less than $100 that put out a lot of BTU's. They do take quite a bit of propane, so you will want a large tank, and a fairly easy refill...

Hi Swedishchef,

Thank you for the great first post. Glad that you and yours were able to see it through so well.

Hmmm...Mother Nature is like that....gives the exam then teaches the lesson (to those that have survived).

I suspect that there will be others like you that will take the lesson to heart and do things to prepare more. We saw a bit of that in south Florida with Hurricane Andrew, then after about two years it died off....a lot of folks were really unprepared (despite a massive amount of timely warnings) when the four hurricanes hit several years ago along with Hurricane Wilma last year.

NOW a lot more folks are in the preparedness mode, sadly still not enough as many still thinking that it "can't happen to me (again)".

While this past hurricane season was rather quiet (and folks really needed the respite) there will still be those that think that they will be rescued by whomever and that they don't need to prepare.

Side note: Several folks have made reference to having the propane / white gas stoves and/or lanterns. These are a great idea, just keep in mind that they are just like flashlights and generators...make sure that you have spares on hand, lamps and batteries for the flashlights (LED's help out on the flashlights) spare mantles for the lanterns, a spare glass for the lantern is also good, and there are now some mesh steel screens that can also be used. There are also adapters for using the 20# propane bottles with stoves and lanterns. Much less trouble than having to deal with the smaller bottles, although it is still a good idea of have some of them on hand.

With the stoves and generators, make sure that you have spare parts on hand for the items that might need replacing at an awkward moment. Many here found out the hard way that replacement fuel filters / carburetor rebuild kits etc. could not be had at any price for some time after the storms. Also, get a heavy chain and good lock to secure your generator, it was bad enough during the hurricanes with generator thefts (stealing them from the temporary wired traffic light signals and homes etc.) but most recently, there was a rash of thefts in SE Fla. from folks that had them in their garages and/or sheds.

Regards,
Comanche7

Very nice first post. Thanks for taking the time to record the lessons you learned from your own experiences.

I think I would be very annoyed, too, that the major radio stations were basically acting as if everything was fine since the area immediately surrounding the stations were relatively unaffected.

Actually, since so many radio stations these days have been gobbled up by giant companies like Clear Channel and basically turned into automated broadcasting operations with little staff--and no local news reporters--I wonder if that affects how useful local radio is these days? I mean, just because there's a DJ talking about the local weather on the Seattle radio does not mean that the person is even in Seattle. Scary, isn't it? Could be some guy in Kansas who just does "local" weather for stations all over the country.

I think that being able to watch/listen to broadcast TV is becoming a necessity during disasters. Although the information is often wrong or overhyped, at least the big TV stations have staff that can actually go out and collect information, unlike so many radio stations now. A fire may only merit a ten-second mention on radio since it only affects a tiny, isolated area, but on TV, they'll cover the same fire continuously for 30 minutes just because it looks so dramatic on screen. Anyway, my battery-powered radio also gets TV band for this reason.