Winterizing for the present storm?

[B. Cole]

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

It’s all well and good to say what people should do/should have/could have done to prepare for things like this crazy storm, but the truth is one cannot plan and thoroughly prepare for any conceivable eventuality.

Did people know the storm was coming? Of course.

Did they know there would be massive failures of electrical supply and therefore their utilities? Of course not.

Pipes and water mains freezing, massive quantities of food spoiling, no way to cook a meal, warm a baby bottle, keep an oxygen concentrator running, flush a toilet. Etc.

Texas will be getting out from under this for a very, very long time.

It’s a tragedy, a disaster compounded upon disasters still being dealt with.

Maggie

Early Feb of 2011 was a large winter storm for Texas.Same time as Arlington Texas was getting ready for Superbowl.
Millions had power blackouts, as well as natural gas disruptions, like this storm a decade exactly later.
The utility company's energy experts, warned of a similar outcome in the future.
Here it is.Again.
Weather forecaster McDonald, of National.Weather Service, said in 2011 "Every 10 years Texas gets a storm like this"
It's not only predictable, but expected.
You must know what's adversely possible in your given location, regardless of the season, and it's personal responsibility to be prepared.
There's no one to blame but themselves, for what Insurance companies call "An act of God" if they don't have survival basics ( Heat producing portable appliances/ generators ( even a little Honda 2,000) /stored fuel/ proper clothing/ ability to purify water/ food/sleeping bags with boxes of chemical hand +foot warmers, that each last 8hrs plus/canned food/batteries for flashlights/etc etc, all bought and stored well in advance, not when everyone is panicking.
A similar example, is people living in Florida, but who don't store the above survival items for Hurricane season, then are faced with empty shelves and gas stations, as a hurricane approaches.I watched it up close , for decades.Same thing every year.
Whos fault is that ?
Its not rocket science
But personal responsibility has become an ugly phrase in America.
It is what it is...

[Lily&Me]

I am a big believer in personal responsibility, actually, but I think you’ve set the bar very high for this kind of situation, B.Cole.

Many live in survival mode all the time, barely making ends meet if at all, and the kinds of preparations you are talking about are just not realistic for everyone.

And if there were massive power blackouts and gas line disruptions 10 years ago, why wasn’t that resolved so it wouldn’t happen again?

Citizens should prepare to the nth degree for their government to fail to prepare?

Something is wrong there.

We’re drifting way off, here, and now I’ll leave y’all to your thread.

Maggie

[Rocinante]

We have a propane-fired Honda 2000 generator, which would be helpful in these circumstances. Worth considering for the future. We don't have much use for it these days under normal circumstances, but it's sitting in our garage, right next to a BBQ tank, ready to go. IB, if we thought we could get it to you fast enough to do some good, we'd do exactly that.

Here's where we bought that generator: https://www.genconnexdirect.net/

[Daquenzer]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

The limitation is that they must be run on natural gas, and we lost natural gas service, perhaps because so many people were running house generators and the distribution system was not designed to provide for all of that. It’s under-capacitied.

You can buy gasoline generators, but we also ran out of gasoline locally for two (edit - three) reasons: number one because people were buying vast quantities for their generators, and number two because tens of thousands of freezing people slept in their cars for multiple nights, leaving their engines running and heaters on, as their only source of heat. Edit: And number three because many fuel stations had no electricity to operate.

Again, the problem is the whole-house paradigm. All or nothing, when it should be scalable to circumstances.

Edit: 36 minutes ago, a gripe from one of my FB contacts. Yes, a lot of people are going to spend thousands of dollars on generators of one kind or another (gasoline, diesel, natural gas, propane). And then those investments are going to fail when the crap hits the fan and we have our next emergency.

"Can't use generators because of lack of gas. Can't get gas because of no power to work the pumps. No power and no water is placing families in life & death situations."

You can use LP gas with generators. Don’t need natural gas. We had a 250 gallon LP tank. It would run our generator for at least a week. And it is easy to fill. Do you not have LP in Texas? Just keep the tank filled. Really very very simple.

Generators need to be maintained like everything else. Every week my generator would go on for 20 minutes and be tested. If it failed the test, then we would get the repair guy out. I had a 10K generator. It would run all our necessary things in the house.

We also contracted with a local company to service it each year.

I don’t get the difficulty of using a generator. Ours worked great in numerous cases where the electricity went out.

Nothing is 100%. But one thing is 100%, if you don’t have a generator and the electricity goes out you will be 100% in the dark.

Yes a generator isn’t cheap. But let me tell you why I got one. We had a freak storm. 9 inches of rain in the evening. Electricity went out. Sump pump failed. I had a foot of water in my basement. I had to put in new furnace, new water heater, I lost my tread mill, we lost beds and other furniture, and I had to get the mess cleaned up. It cost us way more than what the generator cost us. Plus the incredible hassle of cleaning everything. Never again. And i didn’t have a finished basement.

I’m watching on TV where pipes are broken, water is gushing out, places are ruined. It is a catastrophe in Texas. Having a generator could save thousands upon thousands of dollars for a home owner. The problem with the electric grid will continue in Texas with all the windmills. I’d get prepared, because this type of scenario will strike again.

Also My insurance company also gave me a break on insurance because I had backup power.

[rmkrum]

Our Champion Dual fuel 3400watt inverter generator is only run on propane. That way the carburetor and oil stay clean and moisture free. It’s kept on a battery tender so it’s easy to push button start on short notice. It can easily run our home refrigerator and house heater. If We need air conditioning we retreat to the Airstream. I keep several full tanks of propane as spares in the garden shed, and two full tanks on the Airstream A-frame where it’s easy to hook up.

True, being prepared “for any old thing” as Lord Baden-Powell said forever ago, is still a good idea. You don’t have to be a Boy Scout to be ready for stuff that can happen.

A reasonable stock of basic supplies, food, water, and fuel will get you through episodes of difficult situations much better than being totally dependent on regular shopping trips and steady public utility supplies. “Stuff” can happen. It’s much easier to deal with if you plan a bit before the “stuff hits the fan”!

[OTRA15]

Well said, Rich, thanks.

[Lily&Me]

I was reading on another forum about someone who lived in a state that expected everyone be prepared to care for themselves without notice for 72 hours during a natural disaster.

That seems to be a good rule of thumb to try to follow, tho the biggies last far longer than 3 days.

Maggie

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

You can use LP gas with generators. Don’t need natural gas. We had a 250 gallon LP tank. It would run our generator for at least a week. And it is easy to fill. Do you not have LP in Texas? Just keep the tank filled. Really very very simple.

....

Wwwwhat?! Per your ID tile, you live in Jim Falls Wisconsin - population TWO HUNDRED AND TEN PEOPLE.

I live in the Houston Texas metroplex - population SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE.

Where in the hell do you imagine that 250 gallon LP tanks could be installed for individual households in a dense urban area??

Even if we wanted to do it, tanks of that large a size require set-backs from occupied spaces because of building and fire codes. And people would get that space WHERE?? In a post above, I described our 5-foot setback from my neighboring property!! FIVE FEET from my next door neighbor!

= **Complete failure** to visualize through the eyes of others what their individual circumstances might be. No sir, it is really NOT "very very simple".

[Rocinante]

If similar unexpected conditions were to ever hit central FL, where zero percent of infrastructure is engineered against a hard freeze like the one that hit Houston, it would be back to the dark ages faster than one can blink.

A bit more empathy and kindness for the urban and suburban millions caught in this weather disaster might be a nice idea.

[B. Cole]

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

You can use LP gas with generators. Don’t need natural gas. We had a 250 gallon LP tank. It would run our generator for at least a week. And it is easy to fill. Do you not have LP in Texas? Just keep the tank filled. Really very very simple.

Generators need to be maintained like everything else. Every week my generator would go on for 20 minutes and be tested. If it failed the test, then we would get the repair guy out. I had a 10K generator. It would run all our necessary things in the house.

We also contracted with a local company to service it each year.

I don’t get the difficulty of using a generator. Ours worked great in numerous cases where the electricity went out.

Nothing is 100%. But one thing is 100%, if you don’t have a generator and the electricity goes out you will be 100% in the dark.

Yes a generator isn’t cheap. But let me tell you why I got one. We had a freak storm. 9 inches of rain in the evening. Electricity went out. Sump pump failed. I had a foot of water in my basement. I had to put in new furnace, new water heater, I lost my tread mill, we lost beds and other furniture, and I had to get the mess cleaned up. It cost us way more than what the generator cost us. Plus the incredible hassle of cleaning everything. Never again. And i didn’t have a finished basement.

I’m watching on TV where pipes are broken, water is gushing out, places are ruined. It is a catastrophe in Texas. Having a generator could save thousands upon thousands of dollars for a home owner. The problem with the electric grid will continue in Texas with all the windmills. I’d get prepared, because this type of scenario will strike again.

Also My insurance company also gave me a break on insurance because I had backup power.

I agree 100% with your 100% equation. There just seems to be a lot of excuses for being basically totally unprepared, by a lot of people in Texas.
Blaming the weather/grid failure seems to be #1.
Being prepared means being your own grid, like you have shown.
Being your own grid, since this is a Airstream owners forum, is way easier, then the 10K generator you went with.
There is absolutly no reason that any very tiny in square foot comparison Airstream, of any model, isn't completely ready to be a fall back/ bunker type survival area, for a 2 week or more "Grid down".
That includes being ready to serve as same, on the road, if fleeing a approaching Hurricane, which is also fairly common for Texas/ coastal Texas.
Again, there are always a million reasons, for a lack of personal responsibility, for one's own needs.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

I was reading on another forum about someone who lived in a state that expected everyone be prepared to care for themselves without notice for 72 hours during a natural disaster.

That seems to be a good rule of thumb to try to follow, tho the biggies last far longer than 3 days.

Maggie

I would like to see the reference on that. Which state? Are they in a subtropical location where they are at immediate risk of cholera if they lose sanitation and water services?

How exactly are 7 million urbanites and suburbanites supposed to survive without water on almost zero notice? Nobody has offered a tenable suggestion for that yet.

All of these short snappy suggestions belie the true complexity of what Texas faced this week. One of the most disturbing posts I read on social media was a woman begging for help in getting power and transportation for 75 of her patients who were going to die unless they were provided with dialysis - these were people who could not wait 72 hours. There were multiple stories of parents of special needs children who were camping out at gas stations that did have power, in order to keep their medical device batteries charged, because without them, those children would die.

People can't install their own personal dialysis machines, nor can they invent medical machinery adaptations on the fly. We can all do our best to prepare, but unless we are given some reasonable degree of public services in the urban environment where our space is constrained and our resource options are severely limited, then a whole lot of people are going to die. It's that simple.

To that end, we did successfully re-plumb our Interstate's propane distribution system to be able to support our most essential household appliance, which is our 20 cubic foot freezer. We can now run it off the Interstate's propane generator because we developed a way to deliver enough propane to that system to achieve that result.

So yes, our vehicle henceforth will be capable of powering our house, as absurd as that sounds.

[Lily&Me]

I think you are personalizing where nothing personal is meant, IB, and getting very defensive over narrow-minded others who might simply be ignored.

I am not a narrow-minded other, and my sharing of a 72-hour expectation to be able to provide for oneself is just that...a good rule of thumb that I’m going to file away for future reference.

A lot of what has been posted here lately conflates adequate preparations for and in an Airstream Interstate with preparing one’s sticks and bricks to function well off grid for indefinite time periods.

Not the same.

Take a breath.

Maggie

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by B. Cole

.... there are always a million reasons, for a lack of personal responsibility, for one's own needs.

Per his ID tile, B. Cole lives in Rochester Washington: Population 3,126 people. Every person saying "Duh" on this thread comes from a place with nobody in it, and plenty of open land to potentially supply emergency resources to the sparse population that is present.

But B. Cole's association raises a really, really important question, and I'm grateful that the discussion has come around to this:

Given that this thread on winterizing has evolved into a thread on emergency prepping generally in the Airstream context, sir, can you enumerate for us what YOUR preps consist of for the very real Cascadia "big one" earthquake scenario? Because you are living in a place that, as a geologist, I would NEVER consider - west of IH-5 in Washington state.

So what are your preps for your own most likely emergency scenario? This is not a rhetorical question on my part - I would like to learn exactly from what you have done preparation-wise, because you seem very assured of yourself. And everybody else on this forum would also benefit from hearing your information.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Cascadia risk, I recommend this story below, which deservedly took a Pulitzer Prize. It's one of the finest pieces of investigative journalism I've ever encountered.

The Really Big One: An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by Lily&Me

I think you are personalizing where nothing personal is meant, IB, and getting very defensive over narrow-minded others who might simply be ignored....

Oh I could easily ignore them, but nobody else on this thread would learn a danged thing if I did.

There are important points to be made, and perspectives to be gained, and I think the pursuit of discussion has value for those reasons. Because it was Texas last week, but it'll be some other place else next week, and people need to realize up front just how difficult these questions really are.

[Pahaska]

A newbie friend decided that my GT was too small and bought a Sprinter-based, overweight, top-heavy Winnebago with a huge slide. IMHO, the thing is dangerous.

They started out from near Austin at 11:00 for California, on snow-covered roads, right into an ice storm expected that afternoon and night. He thought he could reach Van Horn, 446 miles from here after leaving at 11!

We received a text that they shredded two tires about 50 miles from home and they were waiting for road service that could not come until the next morning. Broke-down, non-winterized RV on the side of the road with two retired people and a dog. They made it through the night by idling the engine. They were checked on during the night by rangers from nearby Lyndon Johnson State Park. They were able to replace the tires and they are home safe with the Winnebago.

I knew he wanted to go, but I had no idea they would start out in the aftermath of the storm of the century. I have not even managed to get out of my driveway four days later. About a foot of snow in my yard when they left.

[GettinAway]

Originally Posted by pdavitt

Texas will recover much quicker than you think. We do not depend, or expect government to protect us. It is our responsibility as citizens to overcome adversity.

One of the reasons I think, if we ever relocate it will be to Texas. Unfortunately lots of folks are thinking the same way, for many many reasons. We were just at Davis Mtn State Park. Just drove through Ft Davis a few times. We will definitely be back there. What a cool town.

[OTRA15]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

. . .
There are important points to be made, and perspectives to be gained, and I think the pursuit of discussion has value for those reasons. Because it was Texas last week, but it'll be some other place else next week, and people need to realize up front just how difficult these questions really are.

Bingo!

Well said.



Travel safe . . . and . . .

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by pdavitt

Texas will recover much quicker than you think. We do not depend, or expect government to protect us. It is our responsibility as citizens to overcome adversity.

For perspective, here's one of the challenges that Texas is currently recovering from, images scraped from the internet this morning.

No "citizens" are overcoming this adversity, nor are they even remotely capable of doing so. We are relying entirely on the government to respond to this, because they are the only entity large enough to take it on. This response is requiring coordination by governments and utility providers nation-wide.

Incidentally, also for perspective (which is persistently elusive on this thread), the number of Texans with little or no water right now is almost twice the ENTIRE population of B. Cole's home state of Washington.

[PeterH-350LE]

Originally Posted by InterBlog

....
No "citizens" are overcoming this adversity, nor are they even remotely capable of doing so. We are relying entirely on the government to respond to this, because they are the only entity large enough to take it on. This response is requiring coordination by governments and utility providers nation-wide....

I completely agree with your posts and information you provided. I should add, however, the citizens responsibility started last week, when it became clear that this is an epic and catastrophic event to about unfold. I had folks laugh in my face when I told them that I was about to stock up on drinking water, fill my bathtubs and many 5 gal buckets and TURN the water OFF to my house and drain the lines. I have 3 generators on stand by and lots of fuel. Can't always count on the government to do it all for you.
and this for everyones amusement

[InterBlog]

Originally Posted by B. Cole

....

There is absolutly no reason that any very tiny in square foot comparison Airstream, of any model, isn't completely ready to be a fall back/ bunker type survival area, for a 2 week or more "Grid down".
....

Bold/underline emphasis added by me in the excerpt above.

(1) Please explain how you have structured your Airstream to keep it upright on its wheels so that it doesn't end up tossed like crumbling cookie across a kitchen floor by the magnitude of earthquake that you very well might experience. Because you cannot "fall back" to using it as your bunker for two off-grid weeks if it is lying on its side.

(2) Please explain how you have readied your Airstream for the tsunami that realistically could obliterate your area. Because I looked up Rochester Washington and it is 100 to 200 feet above sea level (ASL) and adjacent to the Black River floodplain which will receive and funnel the advancing tsunami whenever it does arrive.

"Absolutely no reason"? Re-do the headwork, please, for your sake.

Readers of this thread - I am not attempting to belittle B. Cole. I'm trying to deliver doses of the type of perspective and humility that might one day save your life, or at least make your life more comfortable. If you come away from this thread just a tiny bit humbled and more respectful of what Mother Nature can dish out and how limited we are as individuals to deal with it, that will work in your favor when your time comes to face an emergency with or without your Airstream.

From the article I linked above:

"...FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. ...the science is robust, and .... we now know that the odds of the big Cascadia earthquake happening in the next fifty years are roughly one in three."