I was appalled (but not excessively surprised) to read Michael Yon's account of a woman who survived last year's Texas power crisis - but learned nothing from it.
Met a lady yesterday in Texas who told me about the terrible ice storm last year. She was stuck in her home for roughly one week.
Zero preparations.
No propane heater.
No gas stove.
Little food.
No bucket-toilet. No kitty litter.
Said her toilet quickly was full and gross. She scrunched her face when recounting that part.
No water. Discovered melting snow is not a great way to get water. Especially when you have no energy. After days of zero power, when rolling power came on, she tried to melt snow quickly until power would black out.
No way to heat food without grid electricity. But had no food anyway other than a couple of days.
One flashlight. One set of batteries. Ran out of batteries.
No radio. No comms at all. Incoming or outgoing.
Stayed in bed for several days not to freeze to death. No cold weather gear.
Her home was completely intact. With just minor prep she would have been comfortable.
I asked if she is ready for this winter. Does she have a small gas heater? Food? She said the event was very rare and she hopes it will not happen again ... She said that was once in a lifetime.
There's more at the link.
Even after experiencing that, she has still made no preparations in case it happens again.
What do you say to people like that - except for "Die as bravely as you can"?
Peter
15 comments:
Sadly what you do say when next the feces hit the rotary impeller is "sorry, but no, I do not have enough saved to share with you."
Punctuated with the racking of a pump shotgun slide as needed.
Purely for auditory effect of course. You already had them covered upon their approach naturally.
She's a gambler, some people are.
Once in a lifetime?
I've lived in North Texas most of my life and we get at least one big snow/ice event every decade.
With the insane demand on the infrastructure due to invasions from other states and countries, plus deregulation and "green" energy, it's gonna happen again.
The problem with dying bravely is that at the end one is still dead...
Some people never grow up. They live their lives in the realm of wishful thinking.
Oh, for the love of ...
My daughter and I, as well as most of our neighbors sailed through Snowmagedden very easily. Of course, we already had begun stocking up on food, and the power came on for a couple of hours, just long enough to keep the freezers frozen. What saved a lot of us was having camping gear, or propane BBQ units. I had a small BBQ with a burner plate and a griddle plate that I moved to the front porch and used to cook meals on. Some of our neighbors had working fireplaces, and a stock of wood. We collected snow and runoff from the gutters when it began to warm up, and used that water to wash and to flush the toilets.
I have a propane heater - and ready bottles, and an adapter to use larger tanks (and those). I also have a kerosene heater and good amount of kerosene (as well a number of kerosene lamps/lanterns...) and then, in an off moment, I committed this:
https://elegantungulate.wordpress.com/2022/09/09/dubious-slapdash-heater/
I have some ways to go for some things, but I know from cold and dark. Oh, and various means of heating food (alcohol, kerosene, butane, propane, charcoal OUTSIDE!!) a good amount of water set aside, and I can fudge the rest - it won't be pretty by any means, but survivable. As I've put it, "I won't enjoy a week off-grid, but I'll be alive to bitch about it."
She's obviously a Beto voter. You can't fix stupid, and unfortunately Texas has lots of stupid people.
"Once in a lifetime event." In 2009, due to a job transfer, I moved from Florida to Northern Virginia. During the month of February, we had THREE "once-in-a-hundred-years" 20-inch snowfalls in the space of two weeks. Having just moved from Florida, we no longer owned a snow shovel. I made four trips to the orange hardware store and discovered that they were out of stock. We had food, heat, and the necessities of life, but we had to borrow a neighbor's snow shovel to get out of our driveway.
We try to be prepared for emergencies, but there's always one thing you forget. We no longer live in NoVa, but we now have three snow shovels.
The answer to this question is essentially the identical answer to a previous question you asked. On November 29, 2022 you asked readers for their thoughts (in the post regarding mass unemployment and illegal immigration). Although at first glance, it may seem these these two topics are completely unrelated, and they are - except that the answer is the same. In the previous post you asked incredulously, "We can't just let these people starve!"
Yes, . . . we can.
And now do everyone who lives in snow country who doesn't have chains or snow tires or kitty litter. No wool or space blankets stashed in the car. No granola bars or emergency waters. No basic first aid. No jumper cables. No preps.
Stupidity used to be a major filter for continuation of the species.
As to the house preps, gee, those could be used after a tornado, after a major power disruption caused by a drunk driver or other idiot, after a hurricane, after any disaster where the house still stands.
Same with car preps. I live in Florida, for crying out loud, and I've got e-water and e-food and e-blankets (including wool) and and and in my darned van, because I've almost been stranded in freezing weather, here in Florida.
Again, stupidity should be Nature's way of saying "Thanks for playing, enjoy the dirt nap as a consolation prize."
Darwin will have his due, and the rest of the world will neither miss her and her ilk, nor mind her passing.
I've carried a shovel in the back of my car for at least 30 years, just in case. I've used it once, to put dirt on a muddy spot on a softball field. I wouldn't dream of not carrying it. It fits nicely with the Coast Guard emergency food bars, down blanket, gloves, jumper cables, 12V air pump, roll of tp, tire patch kit. etc. (You get the idea.) The TP gets used fairly often. The rest, not so much.
We were without power for a week. I had just had my second cancer surgery a week before the storm.
We didn't have a problem, we actually had a bit of fun getting to use preps we had been working on for years. 😁
Had heat, hot food, water...everything worked without power and without a hitch. 🤷♂️
You just moved and it takes time to learn from your neighbors and acclimate to a new area.
That said I expect you bought a shovel the next time you saw one. That same lady would not have.
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