Storms and such....for all my Florida uke friends

Nickie

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Folks, no matter how bad it gets, or if we get lucky.....
Please be reminded. We are all in this together. I hope I don't hear anymore stories about people being rude to each other, cutting in line, giving the one finger salute, or refusing to help someone in trouble. Be mindful of the critters too. If we're about to die, or lose everything, or just be inconvenienced and have a hurricane party, the least we can do is look out for each other. If we can't do that, we're doomed as a race anyway. I've seen people around here and around town helping each other, and it makes me smile. I was just filling sandbags with a bunch of women, and we were all helping each other.
And if you don't feel like you got enough bottled water, just take you tupperware containers and fill them with tap water, freeze some for your ice chest, and keep some for drinking and washing. And if worse comes to worse, I won't be adverse to using the water in the toilet reservoirs. So what? It's clean.
Be safe. And have compassion. (I may be preaching to the choir, uke folks are good folks) Good luck. Pass it on.
 
Prayers for all effected. Keep your heads up!
 
Rule of thumb is 1 gallon of water, PER person, PER day as per FEMA when Superstorm Sandy hit NJ...

So if you plan to ride out a week with no power, and 3 folks in your family you need at least 21 gallons of potable water...

you can also flush a toilet with water from a bucket, but if pouring out of a gallon jug, you will not fill the bowl fast enough to encourage the whirlpool that makes it flush, and you need at least a gallon of water to fully flush most modern toilets. We learned about this because we have well-water and without electricity, once the pipes are empty, it's all done since there's no way to get more water out of the ground, nor out of the water heater or water filter in the house since those are electric too.

When Sandy hit NJ, we had over 100 gallons of water for toilet flushing, and 64 gallons of potable water for 2 people, and it served us well because we had no power, no landline phones, no cable tv or internet for 14 days. We cooked all meals either on sterno (15 mins to 'boil' water not quite warm enough for coffee) or with propane, and ate lots of fruit, bread, tuna and other canned goods, as well as had chicken, steak and eggs, sorta like 'camping at home' and at night read by candle-light and stay up with the news via hand-crank radio.

I also have a small solar panel that keeps an old car battery topped up, and we used that to charge the cel phones and iPad, and since the iPad had cellular data, I was able to log on to Weather channel and NOAA web sites to see the latest storm track, but only did this sparingly to conserve battery.

I have a small ham radio rig, but did not have time to set it up, but could have used that too in case the cel towers were offline too long.

We had no generator, but took gallon ziploc bags, filled with water, and stuffed the fridge and freezer, and secondary freezer with them, and in 2 weeks never had any spoiled food. ice cream was still frozen and milk and cheeses never spoiled...the extra ice insulates the cold really well, and while they take up lots of space, the full frozen ziploc bags served us well during the storm's aftermath.

Yes - stay SAFE! :)
 
Waiting here in Palm Beach County, wish this thing would just be over with already! After living through Andrew, Frances, Jeanne and Wilma as well as a few lesser storms, we finally have a generator this time around. Well, we've had it sitting here for more than 10 years and exercised it annually on 1/2 gallon of gas just to make sure it was in working order, but this will be its first real test to keep our house powered up as soon as the storm is out of here. We'll just keep the refrigerators running and a few lights and fans on, but not do any air conditioning, cooking or water heating. It's plenty hot here anyway. Will be battening down the hatches tomorrow or early Saturday, and then hunkering down.

bratsche
 
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We are in the direct path of Irma in the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area. This is big and scary, even though we have been through this before. Scares and warnings are a common occurrence here in South Florida. The storm is over 3 times the size of the State of Florida, and as the storm is so huge, going somewhere else is not feasible, and besides, we need to be here for the aftermath. Some of my family are safely out of town on prior commitments and the rest are preparing as much as possible.

We have enough water, food, gas for the generator, gas in the cars, and within the next few hours we will be as ready as we can be. We didn't get to do all the windows, but we did as many as we could. We will be hunkering down in a very old building and there is a stairway that has concrete on 3 1/2 of the 4 sides. We will go to the stairway if it gets that bad. Much of the building is concrete, so I hope that helps, but much of it is windows as well, so..................

Not much else to do other than wait. Comm will probably be down, so we'll get messages out as soon as we are able.

We hope that all that are affected by this massive storm will be safe and recover quickly.

Lenny...
 
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Well, Nickie, looks like we are in for it. We have a place 20' from Lemon Bay, in Englewood (SW FL). Single story, ground level. Mandatory evac area. Took impt. papers, pix, a few clothes, 2 ukes and a guitar. That's it. I'm guessing we will be underwater with the storm surge; no insurance (can't get it in my area). Good thing I'm not too attached to material possessions. Your loved ones are the only really important things. Hope everyone here and elsewhere in the storm area is safe.
 
I wish you all Florida residents the best of luck, you're all in my prayers...
 
We got out of Puerto Rico six days after Irma, three without electric, two without water. So we are back in Iowa now, but our friends still in Puerto Rico are getting ready for Maria tonight or tomorrow. Many of them have not had electricity since Irma. My heart goes out to them. A rough situation is about to get rougher.

Booli's and Nikie's threads about preparedness are pretty good advise. I did not have a solar battery charger for our phones and tablets, and as soon as I got back to Iowa I ordered one. Being out of touch and not being able to see what is going on is the worst. Also, those super duper tactical rechargeable flashlights, that cost an arm and a leg, become useless after the first night without electric to charge them. I found a couple of $6.99 battery powered flashlights in my junk drawer, and a supply of extra batteries that happened to be on hand for the tv remote, to be a much better investment after my rechargeable tactical flashlight gave it up.
 
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