Urban Escape from NYC/Irene

As foreward I have to thank all the crew here at Zombie Squad and ETS, with advice and guides from you guys I have been able to prep our family quite well over the last year. MODS please move this if I have the wron sub-forum


Primary: CONFIRMED our home flood insurance claim and info contact number(s). Spoke with representative confirming they had our current info, policy is good order, etc.

Irene storm tracker indicated this would be one of the worse storms in NYC are for quite some time. We live in a built up urban town across on Hudson river across from NYC.

Family and I assessed, plus with a proposed mandatory evacuation for people with dwelling at ground level-we made the decision to bug out on Friday. Our home is a very solid three story brick structure home in the center of town, they don't make 'em like this any more-however we are in low part of town which is considered a flood zone due to being on Hudson river and proximity to the NY harbor.

Arranged for several nights stay in Hilton's Homewood suites hotel apartment in Dover, NJ. Choice was based on 400 foot elevation in center of NJ. equidistant from the Delaware and Hudson rivers. Big plus was there are Family and friends in immediate vicinity

Prepped our ground floor living space for flooding/winds---took in plants ,put plywood on interior of the large non-storm picture window. We moved critical items to second floor.

I removed window AC from 3rd floor window, was rushing so busted AC frame a bit and got several mild cuts taking it out (ouch).

Assembled and tweaked my daughters', wife's and our bulldog's 72 hour go-bags. Tweaked and filled my 45L Osprey Exos backpack. Primary eqpt was water, water treatment, dry sacks, lighting, aux lighting,first aid, knives, temp shelter (tarp/plastic sheeting/contractors bags), quick prep food snacks and the JetBoil ZIP (very nice!). Pictures to follow in separate thread. Sig Sauer + ammo also came along--FYI NJ gun laws are draconian and complex, be careful when transporting weapons.

Tweaked my vehicles emergency storage bin (60 liter) food, water, shelter, first aid and cooking supplies
Re-assessed and repacked my vehicle's tool box.

Emptied most of our high cost freezer foods and refrigeration into two medium sized coolers

Packed our bags, 2 weeks worth of water and food, tools, and ourselves + dog into our 2010 Honda CRV.

I secure the main electrical service breaker.
In the event of major road cloggage I had my very detailed paper copy of NJ DeLorme available. We bugged out of NYC area at about 11 AM on Saturday Aug 27th.

Arrived our destination 2 hours later. We were expecting more traffic jams but there was little to no traffic and were able to use the major roads.

Checked in to a well appointed room, class A facilities--pool gym, free breakfast buffet. plenty of good stuff/shops in area. Shopped at mall which stayed open till 5 PM on Saturday.
Used our food preps at hotel.
Talked to loved ones, watched TV and the weather reports and slept a well earned good night sleep.

The suburban area we evacuated to had some heavy rains/wind but no power outage and it's mostly business as usual.

MY town it's otherwise. Friends and emergency reports indicate my neighborhood fared decently, no major damage, however several blocks away power lines are down and some 2+ foot floods in streets. Reported risk of electrocution for people/pet walking in the flooded portions of town.

The town is not permitting vehicular traffic as of n 2 PM Sunday, so we will stay at hotel Sunday night. We plan to wake up early Monday and assess if we can drive back in and start up the house.

We both work in Manhattan but NYC mass transit is iffy so not sure about work on Monday. I can manage my local HVAC contractors via phone/blackberry if needed. The HVAC for most of the medical facilities and datacenters I am responsible for are connected via web base/POTS line building management systems. so I can at least monitor and control things somewhat.

We hope everyone here weathered the storm OK. We wish you have a safe and complete recovery from the Irene aftermath.

Welcome, Diosces!

It sounds like you had your plans and supplies well in hand. Have you ever noticed that people like you never make the news? It's always the people sitting on the roofs of their floating homes that the media focuses on!

I hope your home is okay when you get back to it.

And I'm glad you included your pup in your plans.

Sue

After you have time to return home and think about how it went, it would be great to read your "after-thoughts". Nothing like hearing from the voice of experience!

Thanks all. Susan I agree with you regarding how the news agencies tend to spin their stories towards the unprepared and troubled...

FYI I usually go by username Cockroach but logged into the Diosces account by mistake.

Izzy and Dweste thanks, I will update what occurs when we return tommorrow.

Glad you guys made it OK. Stay safe! Maybe now the family will finally be convinced that daddy's pretend camping gear is good for something.

DB

Glad you made it through so well Diosces. Well done! Hope your home did as well, but kudos on making wise choices about number one - your family's well-being.

Funny, Diosces, you escaped from NYC, I escaped to NYC!

I'm posting on my experiences shortly.

Welcome aboard!

Welcome. Good job prepping. Better job writing it down for us.

All thanks for the feedback and encouragement.
We are very thankful we were fortunate and suffered no harm, unlike some others on the East Coast.

Here's summary of return.
Sunday, we dropped the kids off at my mother in-laws for a previously planned 4 day stay. There were no damages/floods in her town.
Based on isolated flooding in our hometown we decided to delay our return until Monday, especially as we already paid up for Sunday night stay. My work notified that our corporate offices were closed so no rush to be physically in office on monday.

Monday 9 AM we pack up with the dog and head out on Route 80. Heavy traffic due to closures on Rt 46 & 3. We monitor AM traffic radio and maneuver accordingly, get on NJ Turnpike and make our home town. Trip that normally take 45 minute took 2 1/4 hours..not too bad considering the amount of flooding in the counties we went by. Several smaller rivers we passed over/by were brown and swollen..
Wife takes Path subway to work , I set off for home to unpack and start-up house. There were several streets closed/flooded out but I finally made our cobblestone street OK. No flooding on our street. I am surprised as we are one of the lowest points in town. Guess the early 1900's builders of the brick house community knew what they were doing and picked good drainage ground? (our neighborhood houses were the towns original ship builders quarters) Gonna check with our civil engineering friend who's professor at local college to get her input.

Exterior survey from sidewalk showed no damage. I perform an interior house walk-thru with Nebo 200 lumen flashlight (nicely made, reasonably price Fenix alternative), absolutely no damage to windows, floors or roofs. Confirm there are no gas leaks via smell. (Online reports mentioned several homes in our towns had natural gas leaks, mostly from gas hot water heaters and heating boilers in basements)
I reset the main electric breaker and again walk-thru, all power is good.
Our electric /gas utility company had techs checking homes and one visited mine shortly after my return.

As I'm unloading the 2 weeks of food, water and baggage from the CRV I get mildly heckled as an 'alarmist' by one passer-by, I shrug it off. There will ALWAYS be trolls...

Several close neighbors report some flooding in their semi-finished basements. As we only have cinder filled crawl space it's a non issue for me.
I had brought all our potted plants in from the two decks and front sidewalk, the potted dwarf plum and dwarf apple trees I left out. They fared well with no damage and actually appeared invigorated by the storm/wind.
I am glad I put plastic sheeting down before I brought plants in. I watered them a bit before we left and some drained onto the sheeting.

I had emptied our fridge before we left--I hate dealing with chemistry experiments due to power outage. I take the empty warm fridge as an opportunity to do a thorough and clean down and disinfect it.

When I had put the plywood up behind the ground floor picture window I had used a combination of screws and 10d nails. The screws zip out great with my cordless drill. I could not find my cat's paw to get the nails out. the local hardware was out of them so decided to get the Stanley wonderbar. The Stanley turns out full of fail for pulling nails-I find out after 30 minutes of screwing around with it. I resort to my hammer and BFS (Big fricken screwdriver),15 year old klein BEEFY flat tip 20 inch long with 5/8" square shank . Thing is my go-to tool when all else fails.

Methodically I get the critical stuff from the second floor back down to first. Third floor I repair and re-install the AC. Over next several days I move the rest of the stuff and clean up.

In our absense, some mice made their presence known by crapping all over the kitchen countertop, even though we left no food out. I've confirm their route is through the stove and onto the countertop. I've bagged two so far with old school Victor mice snap traps baited with a bit of tasty hot dog.

I inventory what I bought in prep for storm, as I spent a considerable amount tweaking our go bags. Recent purchases like the Jetboil zip (mega win), Sea/summit dry bags and other assorted items I keep as I used and like em. I dont need the extra MSR dragonfly camp stove, black diamond lanterns, and several other impulse buys are going back to the local EMS store for refund.

Things we did right.
We expected the worse and hoped for the best
Confirmed flood and home insurance contacts and policy before hand. Made a 'practice and training' call to claims.
We got all our ducks in a row and did not panic.
We had sufficient preps.
We shut down and started the house correctly.
We evacuated based on our research and evalaution and as recommended by local authorities.
We picked proper location to bug out to rather than a state/local evac shelter.

Things we learned coulda done better:
I worked about 2 AM into Saturday morning finalizing house prep and our tweaking our stuff. With early warning of storm some things could have been done sooner, even though our final decision to leave was not made till Friday.
I threw approx $120 of food out, slightly larger cooler would have minimized the loss.
A mental thing, and probably every new gun owners worry. I was concerned traveling
with a weapon with my family, even though I did everything legal.Mostly afraid of leaving it behind somewhere or losing it.


Things I want to add shortly for our storm and general preps:
Lockable, secure storm shutters for ground floor windows on sidewalk side.
Inflatable Sevylor (had one as a teenager) or similar boat to fit family in worse case scenario.
Rooftop box for CRV. Anything that didn't get into cargo space got scrunched everything in with kids in back seat

Diosces, excellent planning, execution, and write up!

Just one thought regarding shutting down your home--had you considered the possibility of rising floodwater pushing sewage up through your drains, especially since you note that you live in a low lying part of town?

" I dont need the extra MSR dragonfly camp stove, black diamond lanterns, and several other impulse buys are going back to the local EMS store for refund."

Didn't use them this time so probably won't need them next time -or- i've already got redunancy in those areas so they're overkill?

Well, I am coming back to consciousness and picking myself up off the floor.

I have never known a single man in my entire life who would clean a refrigerator without having a gun held to his head.

I'm shocked! I'm stunned! I'm... jealous!



Don't assume it will be the same the next time. I live in a flood-prone area, and every single time it has flooded (four '100-yr floods' in 20 yrs), different areas have flooded, and others didn't, and they were different each time.



Check all the cupboards and drawers that contain cookware, utensils and dishes, too. Not much beats peanut butter as bait.

Very nice job of prepping, and the overview.

Sue

Sue, you've gotta sit down for this, maybe check your insurance, put on your bicycle helmet: I cleaned the fridge this morning. No firearms were involved. It wasn't even dirty. I just didn't like how it was "getting there." I took out the racks, disinfected and washed them. Then I disinfected the insides and vigorously wiped down each surface. When I say I disinfected, I mean I sprayed AND waited a few minutes to let the chemicals do the killing. I even cleaned the bottom of a terrine because it had a ring. After that...

HEY, SUE! ARE YOU OK? BREATHE! BREATHE! DON'T DIE ON ME LIKE THIS!

So as I was saying, after that, I wiped the door handle and anywhere on the door with paw prints. After the racks dried, I put everything back together, arranging all my foods alphabetically.

Da Bing, housebroken

PS. Alright, that last thing wasn't true. But the rest of it I am willing to swear on any scripture of your choosing.

-Blast, much less domesticated.

Thanks Sue. Gotcha on the chaotic nature of flooding....
Regarding the mice I think I've handled the situation but the peanut butter is a great recommendation if I see more signs.


I've got stove (home made aluminun alcohol)and lighting redundancy, plus a matter of economics.

Thanks Arney,
Good point. In our town the domestic sanitary (sewage) line is separate from the street storm drains. Storm drains go out directly to the Hudson River while sanitary goes to sewage treatment facility. Thats not to say the sanitary can't back up into a house but I haven't heard of it recently. I know in the 70's it used to be an issue but the infrastructure has been greatly upgraded

Okay, Bingley, so there are TWO of you out of 3,479,567,645 men.

Most, like Blast and the ones I know, are seriously undomesticated. SERIOUSLY UNDOMESTICATED. (Sometimes, not even housebroken.)

Sue

LOL @ the fridge cleaning!

Wow! How did you fit all that in a CRV? Did you use a roof rack or something?

I wondered about that, too!

Then I was driving south from Seattle on the freeway and saw a small car ahead of me with a dog tied to the roof rack and then I understood!

I accelerated to get closer to the car/dog. It was an Old English Sheepdog tied to the roof...

Well, it was really a STUFFED animal in the shape of an OES tied to the roof.

Sue

No roof box or trailer, It all fit into cargo and various niches in passneger spaces. Took judiscious packing but it fit.

I do plan on a nice Thule roofboxas we had no room for a tent,etc. Also it would make packing easier and more efficient if we needed to access something quickly.

Lol Susan, that was a cool story!