Posted: 9/27/2025 5:50:08 PM EDT
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I live in east Georgia, southwest of Augusta and we got sucker punched by hurricane Helene a year ago today. I say sucker punched because it wasn't really on my radar until the day it arrived. Everyone expected it to go straight up the middle of the state and it did until about 5am on the morning of the 27th when it took a hard east turn toward us. I made a lot of mental notes in the ensuing days as I tried to clean up and help my neighbors. Those became written notes and now I’m adapting them for your edification. Some of it was stuff I had already thought about and applied, some was stuff I knew but hadn’t really applied, and some things I hadn’t considered. Most of this will really only apply to a city-size disaster. In the event of a disaster that affects large portions of the country, some of this won’t apply. To be clear, it was nothing like what NC/TN got, and it wasn’t as bad for me as for some in the area. That said, it was probably the worst disaster anyone alive today in this area has ever seen. For me personally, the house took some damage and we were without power for 13 days. Being on a well, that also meant no water until I got the generator going. But my house wa livable and my wife and kids were OK so I am thankful. Unlike what appears to be the case in NC/TN where the destruction was largely caused by flooding, most of our destruction was caused by downed trees. It rained for almost 24 solid hours (approximately 15 inches) before the actual hurricane arrived, which softened the ground and caused many trees that might otherwise have withstood the wind to uproot. The trees fell across roads, across houses, and across power lines. Having the preps I had helped me avoid needing to go, for instance, to downtown Augusta for the free bottled water handout. There weren't ever roving gangs on the street wielding machetes, but people drive bad enough when the traffic lights are working; they go absolutely nuts when they’re off. I heard there was some looting in Augusta but nothing too crazy. Pretty early on I took my wife and kids to stay with family in Athens Georgia, and spent my time clearing roads, then getting the mess off my house, then trying to help neighbors. In no particular order, here are some thing I learned: Supplies availability - “if power goes out, I’ll go buy a generator.” No you won’t. Everyone will need the same things you need. They'll go the same directions and check the same stores. You will not think of a store that sells gas cans that someone hasn't already thought of and bought out. I tried Walmart, Tractor Supply, Academy, Harbor Freight, Home Depot and Lowes in Athens trying to find a gas can to help a friend two days after. More than a week post-hurricane, you couldn't buy an L15-30P plug east of Atlanta at least. Chainsaws weren't much better. That said, in a disaster that affects a region only as big as a hurricane, the market will bring in those relief supplies pretty quickly because there's money to be made. Generators were totally gone two days in, but by a week later there were pallets of them at Walmart. Again, in a broader multi–state disaster, this whole calculation would change. Transportation - keep the cars gassed up if there's any sign of trouble brewing, of course. Be prepared to travel to meet your needs. I regularly made the 3+ hour round trip to Athens to get gas or other needed items. While you couldn't get gas cans in Athens, that city was otherwise basically untouched. People in my area were panicking about gas and groceries not being available within 5 minutes of their home, so be prepared to go where the emergency didn't touch. At no point in all this did my truck have less than a half tank of gas, and about a week after the hurricane the gas stations in the area were largely back online. The practice of keeping gas filled and doing so in other towns allowed me to avoid the "watering holes" - places where everyone has to gather and tend to get testy over scarce resources. Also get a road atlas because GPS may not be reliable in the immediate aftermath and you might need to plot an unorthodox route. Bugout location - Related to being prepared to travel, if you can get your family outside the emergency area it clears up a lot of time and mental energy to address other problems. The day after the storm, I stashed wife and the younger kids with extended family in Athens. That obviously had its challenges for them but allowed me the agility to get cleanup done at our house or go help other people. If they had stayed home, a significantly higher percentage of my energy and time would have been spent securing resources (e.g. water) for them, and I would not have ventured as far trying to help other people in town. This may be difficult if you don't have family two hours away and the hotels/airbnbs fill up with disaster refugees. Be willing to make the decision before everyone else realizes how bad things are. We lived through a tornado in 2017 that wrecked our town but the town 20 minutes away was completely untouched. This was much bigger than that but we could still get outside of it pretty easily - approx 90 miles was enough. Social unrest - the first two days brings out the best in people. It really doesn't take more than any four days to bring out the worst and people start getting nasty. Though it is worth mentioning here that there is a difference between rural and urban areas in this regard. I never felt like I had to even keep an eye on my neighbors - we all looked in on each other and worked together to make sure the old folks on the street had what they needed. In the city, from what I heard, people got testy within a couple of days. Fortunately for us, the line crews just flooded in and got things up and running, starting in the more densely populated areas. When we did have to go to Augusta we made an effort to be out by dark. I mentioned to a friend that it felt like I Am Legend where Will Smith’s character always had to be in when the sun set. Food - two weeks of shelf stable food for your whole household, stored separately from your normal pantry. And be realistic; your teenage son isn't going to just eat one can of green beans a day. Also probably stack some to share with neighbors. Again, the idea is to free you up from needing to go to the watering holes. Don’t underestimate the importance of a hot meal every now and again. Canned beans will keep you alive, but food is more than just calories. Water - This was the biggest lesson for me. When the power went out and my generator initially didn’t run, there was no water in my house. In town, there were intermittent boil advisories, and they did shut municipal water off for a little while from what I understand. Anyway, I now think about water in two categories: drinking and other. Other can be for washing, flushing toilets, etc. Drinking water requires purification/filtration and relatively low volume; other water you really just need volume. Figure out either a reliable source to get water and purify it, or a way to store a lot and then purify it. If your plan is to hoof five gallon buckets to the creek, that's extremely labor intensive and will take a large part of your day. I was mostly able to get drinking water from Athens, though for a few days I did fill five gallon buckets from a ditch for toilet flushing water. Electricity - I can tell you what I learned the hard way. Ideally, get a dual fuel inverter generator, and I'd recommend 5000 running watts or more. Dual fuel because propane is easier to store and can be easier to find when the crowds are panicked about gas. Inverter because it's quieter and more fuel efficient. Make sure it has a 240V/30 amp plug. Crank it every month and let it run. Use ethanol free gas, and keep extra oil on hand for it. I had a generator but I didn't keep up with maintenance and I didn't have that L15 30P plug extension cord I needed to run the well pump. For the first five days the foresight of having a generator did me absolutely no good because it didn't crank. I needed to find a small engine shop to replace the carburetor and guess what - so did everyone else in the region. One interesting observation is that without power (and thus without A/C) most modern houses would pretty quickly become too humid to be livable, at least in the south in September. We had a dehumidifier going off the generator to try to keep everything from molding. Lighting - the technology in this area is amazing. Headlamps are a must-have. Keep them locked up if you have kids, or the headlamps will probably be gone when you need them. Harbor Freight sells a small LED work light for $2 that runs 48 hours off a couple AAAs. I probably bought 6 and just stashed them. I also have some rechargeable flashlights that use the same chargers our phones do so I can charge them up in the truck, though I haven't even needed to yet. We were really never without light when we needed it. Comms - depends on who you want to talk to. Cell service, SMS, and 5G have at different times been available or absent. Ham radios are fine if there's someone in range you want to talk to and you have a pre established ICE comms plan. They're also useful for monitoring weather and other emergency broadcasts. Make sure you have car chargers for any comm equipment. My friend up the road has Starlink, which basically gets you internet anytime you have power. For my part, it was fun getting our news the old fashioned way - via panic gossip from ill-informed neighbors. FRS radios are obviously useful in a caravan, or very locally. Dirty Civilian on YouTube has some incredibly helpful videos on this subject, and basically everything I'm saying here. Cleanup and route clearance (hurricane/tree-specific) - get a chainsaw. A good one, and bigger than you think you need. A small one will do 90% of what you need, but the big tree trunk it won't cut might be across your driveway. Run it once a month. Keep everything on hand that you need to keep it running - extra 2 cycle oil, gas, bar and chain oil, round and flat files, and extra chains. If a tree falls across your driveway, you either clear it yourself or wait for someone who has a saw and everything I just described. I had everything except an extra chain. I would have been out of commission four days in when I bent my chain if my dad hadn't had extras when he came to help me clean up. Chainsaws are like tanks and armored vehicles - they're a huge force multiplier if you have the supply chain to keep them operational. To me, chainsaw work to clear downed trees falls into three categories: 1. Clearing driveways and roads (which needs to be done immediately before any emergency vehicle needs to come through) 2. Clearing trees off roofs to tarp holes (which needs to be done before the next time it rains) and 3. Yard cleanup (which needs to be done eventually). Other people don't seem to triage this way - we'd hear of someone asking for desperate immediate help and when we'd show up they'd basically have a few limbs down. I also bought three 20' tow straps and a come along from harbor freight and they've been used a lot. I also keep a tourniquet in my pocket when I'm running a chainsaw. Harbor freight also sells some $6 mechanics gloves and those were a near constant companion for 8 days. Worth their weight in gold. Fuel - keep at least 5 (probably 10-15) gallons of gas on hand. This is really to hold you over the first few days until gas stations get power back. Cycle them into your car once a month and refill. Propane stores more easily so it's not a bad idea to have 3-4 propane tanks (or one big one) to feed a grill or heater or the dual fuel generator I mentioned above. Be really careful with fuel - if power goes out you'll be handling it a lot more than usual and it's easy to fuck up. At least two houses within 5 miles of me burned to the ground, and both were rumored to be fuel related. Intermittent cell service also meant no way to call the fire department. Cash - most places won't open if they can't process a card, but I did buy some things for cash both from a local store and from friends/ neighbors. Last but not least, have friends that you can take turns on supply runs or consolidate them, share both resources and knowledge and help each other with big tasks, and keep up morale. I had two friends and my dad come help me clean up and get trees off my house, and just having the camaraderie was worth more than the sum of the parts of their help. I tried to upload some more pictures but they're apparently too big. Attached File |
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Great post. When Ian hit me three years ago my house flooded. It wasn't from surge though, it was from the local river. I had advance notice that we would flood. I was able to get camping tables and use pallets get most everything off of the floor. I had learned from previous hurricanes what to prep with and everything paid off in spades. I had fuel for weeks. Generator and backup generator. I was hundreds of gallons of water. I had quite literally everything you mention in your post. Other than the water coming in the house, we were good to go. It was so vindicating to have something so catastrophic happen and yet be so prepared. Noah built the ark before the storm. edit: I will add cell towers were down. I had starlink internet I was running off of my generator and using wifi calling. Starlink was an amazing asset to me post storm when all other lines for data/voice were down. |
| I live in Fairview NC right over the mountain from Chimney Rock area that got devastated. Ive been thinking about the storm all week. It feels like forever ago and also like it happened yesterday at the same time if that makes sense. So much has been rebuilt in our small community and region but there is certainly some areas that still need a ton of work chimney rock being one of those areas. I always wondered what is would be like to go through a shtf situation like that and was very suprised how well us neighbors banded together and everyone helped out. It was truly eye opening the stuff people did for each other. I felt so proud to live in a area that has such great people. Every blue collar guy that had a mini x or skid steer or chainsaw or any equipment loaded up and went to work myself included. It was a rough couple months but the first week or so was kind of a vacation no phone service or any communications for that matter i just woke up every morning and went out and found something to work on usually till dark or so. Luckily we are on well water and I had a generator so we were living pretty normally. The one hard thing was getting gas i have 4 cars so was able to siphon until gas started coming back up. If it was a true shtf situation im not really sure how you could run a generator because you can hear them from so far away it would be like a call to let everyone know you have resources. I definetly wouldnt be happy to never experience that type of storm again. One of our neighbors had a weather rain gauge recorded 28 inches in 48 hrs. |
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Wrote a lot here in the week or so after, then condensed everything together here Helene AAR South Georgia. Lots of places still with blue tarps on roofs a year later. |
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I spent 14 days based in valdosta supporting the effort to bring power back on. All day every day driving from rally point to rally point delivering supplies. I covered thousands of miles and that place was torn up. For the most part people were happy to see us and we didn't have people issues. Except for the woman we caught stealing fuel. |
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I'm in augusta. We got fucked hard by helene. Vehicles smashed by trees. Houses smashed by trees. My mom's house got smashed. I didn't even realize it was a hurricane and went out driving in it to try and get to her. Too many trees were down, and I couldn't get out of the neighborhood. I did witness the tree fall and smash my neighbors' house. Part of it hit my truck as I was driving past. I'll tell you, one lesson I did not expect to learn was how strong brick is. I saw at least a hundred houses smashed by trees. If y'all don't remember the documentary about the 3 little pigs, there was one of them that had a house made of brick. It turned out to be stronger than the houses made of wood and bitch ass vinyl siding. That echos what I saw from helene. Houses made of brick will stop a tree. They stopped multiple trees. Houses with just siding were cut completely in half. The trees fell all the way through, smashing whoever was inside. The other big lesson I learned was you get what you pay for with home owners insurance. Those of us that had good insurance with low deductibles got taken care of very well. The people with cut-rate insurance and high deductibles got absolutely fucked. Here we are a year later and some of them *still* have blue tarps on their roof and are trying to get insurance to fix their house. 
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Quoted: I'm in augusta. We got fucked hard by helene. Vehicles smashed by trees. Houses smashed by trees. My mom's house got smashed. I didn't even realize it was a hurricane and went out driving in it to try and get to her. Too many trees were down, and I couldn't get out of the neighborhood. I did witness the tree fall and smash my neighbors' house. Part of it hit my truck as I was driving past. I'll tell you, one lesson I did not expect to learn was how strong brick is. I saw at least a hundred houses smashed by trees. If y'all don't remember the documentary about the 3 little pigs, there was one of them that had a house made of brick. It turned out to be stronger than the houses made of wood and bitch ass vinyl siding. That echos what I saw from helene. Houses made of brick will stop a tree. They stopped multiple trees. Houses with just siding were cut completely in half. The trees fell all the way through, smashing whoever was inside. The other big lesson I learned was you get what you pay for with home owners insurance. Those of us that had good insurance with low deductibles got taken care of very well. The people with cut-rate insurance and high deductibles got absolutely fucked. Here we are a year later and some of them *still* have blue tarps on their roof and are trying to get insurance to fix their house. https://iili.io/K1kAP7S.png It was unbelievable. And yes to your point about homeowners insurance - I had about 60k damage to the house, and thank God I didn't have a certain company "insuring" my property. I was sitting in my living room on arfcom in the early morning hours as I realized it was bearing down on us. If you go look at the archived thread you can see my posts asking people what apps they were using to track it. I had spent the day prior helping a friend clean up his flooded basement from all the rain and honestly thought that was the worst of it |
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I did Helene in Evans Ga, I got lucky and I had everything I needed, save maybe enough fuel. I added three jackery devices and a lot more jerry cans. I had more kit out than I care to admit with friends that weren't as ready. Here's one I haven't seen, go to an asian market and grab a single burner butane stove. This is rated for indoor use and lets us make coffee and other things when the range is DOA. Yeah you can use the rec tec and the blackstone to cook outside, but its nice to have some coffee. If I could post a pdf I'd pass on the AAR we made |
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Quoted: I did Helene in Evans Ga, I got lucky and I had everything I needed, save maybe enough fuel. I added three jackery devices and a lot more jerry cans. I had more kit out than I care to admit with friends that weren't as ready. My yard full of shitbox cars redeemed itself. That was always my game plan. 7 or 8 old cars out in the yard, all of them with full gas tanks. That's how I kept spare fuel for the generator. It worked like a charm. I did notice my wife stopped bitching about all my hotrods after she saw first hand how we had power and nobody else around did.  I did learn how much of a pain in the ass it can be to get fuel out of vehicles. Its not like on the movies where you drop a hose in and suck a couple times and siphon every last drop. What I ended up doing was parking them on an incline, then pulling the fuel line loose at the mechanical pump. gravity does the work. Every drop of gas comes out at you. When stores finally opened back up, I had to go to autozone for something. There was a line out the door of people with dead car batteries. Guess they didn't have a generator. They had been using their cars to charge their phones. Ran their cars out of gas, then eventually ran their batteries down. |
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OP mentioned a road atlas. I have been on a few hurricane deployments where I looked like a genius because I could navigate. All I really did was load maps of the hot zone before I went wheels up. You can download maps to your phone. Downloading offline Google maps for your AO is a no brainer. Also download your evac routes and likely bug out and shelter locations. Redundancy is good. The are stand alone aps. I use Avenza. You download the ap and then load whatever open source maps you want. You can also purchase the kind of map you desire. These maps work off GPS. Once downloaded you don't need a cell signal. |
| Augusta here. Diesel was plentiful. I drove my one ton around for a month. Had water but no power for over a month. I work at a warehouse. Had power back on there within a few days. Company was nice enough to have showers and washing machines set up. We had a dozen trees blown across our road. Took us a few hours with chainsaws and a skid steer to get access to the main road. |
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We got lucky not to have the hill come down on the house. A big tree top went down that could have hit us, but it went the other way luckily. Our neighbor's place that is down lower flooded out and is still uninhabitable. They hadn't finished moving in with their newborn when it happened. Lessons learned were that I need to get a house generator connect or figure out how to power the well directly - power was out for ten days, but our other neighbor is on a different line so we could get water from their well without firing up the big generator or figuring that out. The big one though was that I had never even considered the possibility we would be marooned on the wrong side of the "creek". We have a private bridge / road used by four houses that went out. It took the better part of a week to get a path cleared out and get cars out over the bridge two properties downstream. Also, fuck Helene. Our "creek" was ~ 4' overtopping the bridge. dozens of them went out in our valley nearby. The highway was washed out in several places, and undercut such that when they opened the rest the first vehicles through buckled it and fell in the hole. |
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Quoted: What I learned from several hurricanes in Florida. One generator is none. Two is one. Generators run great, until they don't. No matter how well you maintain one and think it will be reliable, have a spare just in case. I learned that through experience. This is good advice. We have backups for all our generators. Learned that lesson the year Charlie, Francis, etc. came through. Lots of good stuff in the op. |
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My little westinghouse generator got us through helene on gasoline. It ran the whole house fine. It did struggle a bit when we turned on the dryer. Thats honestly the first time I ever tried to run the dryer on the generator. I did take the opportunity as soon as the world came back to life to order a new generator. I wanted moar capacity, and also went tri-fuel. I can run it on propane and NG. As long as the NG lines are working, I don't need to worry about storing fuel for the generator. And as long as I don't put gas in it, I don't have to worry about fuel sitting up and going bad in it. So far, I've used it a few times. Still haven't put any gasoline in it. I think I will try to keep it that way. Gas will just by my last resort, hail marry. I did have to upgrade my interlock setup, wiring, and breaker. The only one was 30a. New one is 50a. I did keep my old generator and get the correct cable so it can plug into the new interlock. So if my new generator shits the bed, the old one can be a backup. |
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Great post OP. Neighbors helping neighbors was an awesome sight to see. Lessons learned: Drilled power pumps work great for getting water out of a creek. Get more than one, you will burn them up. The rubber diaphragm on your Coleman gas grill regulator will rot when you least except it. Have a back up open flame source. A second small grill will do. Get a Starlink mini. Get the service and then put the service on hold. Doesn't cost you a penny until you restart service. Fuck Helene. |
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Quoted: First time huh. Much like a heat wave or hurricane in New England or a flash freeze in texas, it's a little different when a random curveball knocks out somewhere that it's not exactly normal at... and in mountainous terrain it makes a lot of difference, too. |
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This is fantastic and realistic info. I learned about the availability of things post-storm when Irma rolled through here in 2017. We didn't get hit very hard, we never lost power and had no building damage other than to the shop and the chicken pen. Trees were felled all around that, one big one that got knocked over and the roots tore the porch of my shop to hell and back. Foolish me, thinking I'd go to the local hardware store and buy a chainsaw...no, no you won't, Quintin. You're not going to find one at Lowes, Home Depot, Ace Hardware, nor at your local Stihl or Husqvarna dealers after a hurricane came through and knocked everyone's sand castles over. Because everyone else needs a chainsaw too. |
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Always have cash for times like this. Cards and crypto do no good when the power is out. I’m out of hurricane zone here but we have gotten leftover winds and some rain. I buy a few tarps a year just to have if needed. I keep 40 gallons of ethanol free gas on hand for a generator and 5 gallons of 2 cycle mix for saws. Living in the woods has its benefits but there are things you need to prepare for as much as you can. |
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Quoted: Having been through hurricanes, this is a great post. It should be stickied somewhere and able to be added to. Maybe the survival forum. It should be appended to the existing thread in survival referenced above. There’s a LOT more good info in that thread. |
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Quoted: Always have cash for times like this. Cards and crypto do no good when the power is out. Everywhere you'd even be able to spend money was closed. Turns out, when there's no power for the cash register and gas pumps, there's no power for anything else in the store. They didn't bother opening up. While we're talking about lessons learned... The morning after, power was out people were bored. They started driving around gawking at all the carnage. They were wasting their gas. Those same people less than a week later would be the ones who's car were out of gas.
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Yep, lots of memories just starting to pop up on my feed today. We were in that swath of blacked out sat imagery. My whole home Generac was a rockstar and my loaner gennies were very appreciated. Most of my preps worked as intended. Cut it close with the whole house genny getting low on LPG as the propane company literally was unable to navigate roads to me for a bit due to the hundreds of trees on the road. I was working on damage reimbursement data this week for a local municipality that had 400 power poles snapped in a town of just 10,000. My office is there and we had power back on in 3 days luckily only because we were close to a substation but our fiber was out for a month. I pumped 120GB through a Starlink mini in the first 2 days I think at my office. It literally kept my business running. Also had one at my house and we had people come over for showers, meals and connectivity. The only real blessing was that it wasn't 100 degrees. Ironically we're in the blue ridge mountains right now and had a monsoon come through last night. Great Smokies had some roads washed out and some of the forest service roads we were running today were roughed up. I can tell you this too; folks up here already had Helene on their mind so this rain with some activity in the Atlantic has them on their toes. I bought 4000W dual fuel inverter gen's for every employee online 2 days after the storm hit. They were shipped and delivered before some of the employees had power back. |
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I "preach" dry fuel for generators it solves the carb issues forever. It's very easy to convert most carbed generators to LP and it is so much safer to store LP than gasoline but the big benefit is the dry fuel. Looking over towards the Atlantic I changed oil & filters in 3 of my generators today and checked start batteries, 4th was already changed. NHC has moved the potential storm west 3x since yesterday and with a monster to its east the track is likely to be squirrelly but probably mainly a rain event especially for NE Ga. and SC. Satellite comms are also great, Garmin InReach Mini on sale currently for $249 on Amazon, being able to at least text out of area family or those local and also w/o phone/cell helped reduce stress especially for the wife. Good post OP. |
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I’ll add that we were pretty stocked. Still had to resupply after a few days. We had to go west 60 miles for groceries and such. Next time 40 miles. Next time 20. Out of power 8 full days. Nothing open anywhere. Praise God for the Utility folks, National Guard, and locals. And Don’t ever trust FEMA. |
| I find it ironic how much hams contributed to Katrina and as a result the gov spent billions on comms for first responder networks over the decade following. Then when Helene hit, the repeater on mt Mitchel became the main comms for quite a while again. The dude who ran that net all day for a couple weeks had my respect for sure. Of course, other official channels were reestablished but the communication was still incredibly valuable. I liken it to the posts about the difference in food that will keep you alive and comfort food that will help you mentally. Even though the ham news network wasn’t critical after the official channels were up, it was still like a chocolate bar for the mind. |
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I'll add a bit, mostly knowledge from Irma in 2017 and being without power for 10 days afterwards. Observation - A generator is great, especially the inverter kind. I had a small 1800w inverter, and a large 3500w 240v construction generator. The smaller generator was used to power the internet router and the fridge. It used about 1.5 gallons per day. The larger construction generator was only run at night (10pm-7am) to power an AC unit. It would burn 3.5/gal in that time, so I used 5 gallons of gas per day. I kept 3x 5gallon cans and each trip to the local station was 30m-1hr wait time, and by the third day I saw a couple meltdowns from people losing their patience. Aftermath - I now have multiple inverter generators. Observation - A well is pointless without a way to power it. I had a 240v generator, but no cable to run power. Aftermath - Get a cable, know how to hook it up without energizing the panel Observation - (Noted above) - Patience will be thin. A situation at the local Wawa with 30-minute gas wait times started because a woman of Caribbean Indian nationality wasn't going to yield an inch and made a big scene, no matter that she blocked traffic. The employees tried to play the middle ground, when it was clear that one party was being obstructive. Be prepared to deal with selfish people. It could have easily went sideways and I was right in the middle of it. The whole situation should have never happened. Observation - The power company and smart grid knows who doesn't have power. The guy across the street called Duke Energy every morning and afternoon to report the power was out. He encouraged me to do the same, which was a total waste of time to call them. I have text notifications and they updated often enough. Having a good chainsaw is worth its weight in gold. The day the Ace was back open I ran up to get one, there was a line out the door and they had a queue of a couple people at a time, by my turn only a Stihl MS441CM was left on the shelf, so I bought it and still use it today, never had a problem with it. The largest tree on my property fell (in the right direction, otherwise it would have crushed the house). Until I got the saw in the aftermath I was not prepared to deal with that. And finally, with saws and other preps people who aren't prepared will ask for help. You'll need to decide if/what to do. I helped clear roads but wouldn't do any work on private property. I wouldn't lend tools, especially a chainsaw. One person asked me to look at their generator, which I did and got it working, and then called me weeks later expecting me to maintain it again (Nope!) |
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Good post. A few of my experiences (typed on my phone so apologies for typos). Our area got hit hard (north of Asheville). There were two things I wish I had before the hurricane - a starlink and a solar generator/battery bank. I've since corrected these deficiencies. It would have been much easier to manage rotating the freezers on a battery bank instead of using a generator only. Starlink would have been great for decompression during downtime and improved communications I was able to communicate with people outside the impacted areas somewhat easily with my garmin inreach (kudos to garmin for waving my $170 bill at the end of the month), but local communication was quite difficult as we were pretty well trapped in the immediate vicinity of our home for 4-5 days until we could clear enough trees from the road to get a vehicle through. Food and water were part of my typical preparations, so these were never an issue and we were able to give away quite a bit of our supplies to those in greater need. We also had another home that we were able to get to after about a week that I had already set up to accept a 240v generator and run the well and take basic showers. I had about 30 gallons of gas stored in Jerry cans, and I always made a habit of filling up vehicles ahead of any major weather events, so we were good to go on gas until the roads were cleared enough to leave the impacted areas to get supplies. I only had a 2000W inverter generator, so it sipped gas as long as I ran it for a few hours each day just to keep the freezers going and charge electronics. Once gas was more certain, I ran it more for entertainment (again, starlink would have been amazing here). I'm character limited on this post, so ill post again right after. |
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The outside support our area got was amazing and I'm grateful for all of the volunteers. Samaritan's purse and Baptist on Mission have been an invaluable resource to this region. We have come a long way in a year, and I got a lot closer to my neighbors during the weeks and months after. Our area has a long way to go - debris removal trucks are still running nonstop. Many homes still are in need of major repairs; even we will finally be get a new roof on our home next week. I have more, but the 2000 character limit is annoying. |
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I live on the Texas coast a couple houses away from a canal that delivers fresh (but brown) water to cities and industrial users. I keep a bunch of 5 gallon buckets around for getting water from it. Most will be dirty water buckets, but I have a few earmarked for treating water and for clean water. This is for long term backup if I use up my yearly multiple cases of bottle water. One of the things I got this last year or so is some of the water treatment that settles the solids out the water. From there, I can either chemically treat, filter, or boil it. The dirty water can be used for toilet flushing. For food, I keep a mixture of stuff from MREs, Freeze Dried, canned food, and dry stuff like beans/rice/dry noodles/powdered milk. Flexibility is always nice…..being able to eat a MRE on a really hot day is better than heating up stuff. For heating water/food, I keep a big propane burner and a small one burner canister stove. I also have a decent amount of charcoal and wood if needed. Fans….fans are damn nice to have if you don’t have a way to run an A/C. I could sleep pretty well with a fan blowing on my powered by my generator without using up too much power. I also have a couple of fans that run off of rechargeable batteries. I have folding solar panel charger and battery bank that I am planning to use to help keep my phone charged. For lights, like what has been mentioned, head lamps are great. I also like to have small lanterns (rechargeable or battery) for lighting up rooms at night. Having a way to entertain kids with being able to read books or play a board game is nice and lanterns fit that bill nicely. For winter, I have a decent size portable electric heater and a Mr Buddy (along with the propane hose). After the last big freeze in TX, I quickly learned that my winter preps were lacking. |
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I'm over south of Ennice NC, the worst hit area as far as friends was spruce pine. Friends there lost their bridge. People took up money at work and got them a generator fuel and food. Took a .Gov vehicle to deliver. Here it wasn't really crazy bad. Some roads partially washed out. I lost a day of power and was on a generator. Next closest coworker was 7 days, the friend in spruce pine was 30. Simple things I was glad to have. Gas grill, (extra tanks) led lanterns, being near running water to cook or just flush the toilet. Someone mentioned dead car batteries. Same thing here. People leaving the car radio on because they didn't have a battery radio. Since I have gifted cheap radios to family. At 10 bucks or so buy more than one. Keep plenty of batteries. Have probably 7-8 but easy to misplace Oddest thing I'm looking at is a portable DVD player with OTA just another option for entertainment/news. Ham isn't really active here last I checked. Was thinking, a fat 50 ammo can, you can squeeze a couple of small led lanterns, a bottle top burner to cook with a couple of radios, spare batteries. You could add mantles for a Coleman lantern. Add some matches or lighters. |
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We live between Augusta and Greenville in western SC. Forecast was for the storm to swing west of north after landfall and we would get 40-50mph gusts. I watched online sources and saw landfall was east of prediction and by 11pm it still hadn't turned. Got up at 1am to check...coming straight at us. 3am I got up as the wind began to pick up. Made a pot of coffee. Got my elderly Dad up at 4:30 and got him downstairs (afraid we might have roof damage. Power went out abput 6am. Clear NE side of eyewall remnant passed over about 7am. 80+mph gusts for an hour plus. We could see flashes as trees took out power lines in the area. Could hear the booming and thumping of big trees crashing down. When the wind died down to 50mph I walked down to the road. Trees, utility poles, and lines down both directions. Road kinda open by the next day, but the whole region was a disaster. Over 80% of our county was without electricty. Internet was down many places, especially after day 2 when their backup equipment went out. We were without power for 7.5 days. All trash/recycling facilities were closed (fun when you've lost a fridge full of food). Gas and city water worked. I lived in the coastal range of CA for 22 years with strong winter storms, mudslides, road closures, and power outages. Have been "prepping" for a while, so we were mostly ready. Water. I have 2x 5gal blue plastic dedicated water containers. Fill, add a few drops of bleach, seal. Only for drinking and maybe cooking. A case or two of bottled water are good to keep around. After a few days you'll be running out if that's all you have. Food. We keep our pantry stocked with canned food, pasta (smaller types that cook faster are best), rice, potato flakes, etc. Also dried fruit and/or trail mix, vitamins, a few instant meals, instant coffee. Don't forget pets. Keep extra kibble on hand for them. Cooking. We have a two burner Coleman stove, several 1lb cylinders and 3x 10lb with adapter, two smaller backpacking stoves. My wife happily cooked our meals on the back porch. Shelter. We have tarps, a tent, plenty of cordage, lumber, some plywood for makeshift shelter if needed or to temporarily patch a damaged roof or window. Thankfully our house was undamaged other than a few dozen shingle tabs that broke off. Misc. I mostly standardized on 18650 battery LED lamps. Have several headlamps, flashlights, lanterns that use them. I recharge and rotate batteries periodically. We have three small power banks for keeping phones going for a couple of days. Chainsaw and accessories already a must have in our rural area anyway. After Helene I bought a small dual fuel inverter generator. Enough to run fridge, our tankless gas water heater, small electronics, etc. Always keep 10gal non-ethanol gasoline on hand and rotate through lawnmower, tractor, etc. Mindset. Be prepared to live a simpler lifestyle for a while. Triage your needs and focus on those most important to keep you and your family safe (water, food, shelter). Be prepared to work. Hard. Digging out clogged culverts, cutting downed trees, moving debris is Real Work (tm). Get to know your neighbors ahead of time and encourage them to be prepared so they don't become a burden to you and others. Morale is important. Having a couple of games or books to read or small hobbies that don't require power can keep you and your family from getting frustrated and angry. |
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Quoted: My little westinghouse generator got us through helene on gasoline. It ran the whole house fine. It did struggle a bit when we turned on the dryer. Thats honestly the first time I ever tried to run the dryer on the generator. I did take the opportunity as soon as the world came back to life to order a new generator. I wanted moar capacity, and also went tri-fuel. I can run it on propane and NG. As long as the NG lines are working, I don't need to worry about storing fuel for the generator. And as long as I don't put gas in it, I don't have to worry about fuel sitting up and going bad in it. So far, I've used it a few times. Still haven't put any gasoline in it. I think I will try to keep it that way. Gas will just by my last resort, hail marry. I did have to upgrade my interlock setup, wiring, and breaker. The only one was 30a. New one is 50a. I did keep my old generator and get the correct cable so it can plug into the new interlock. So if my new generator shits the bed, the old one can be a backup. How did you tap into your NG line? |
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Another thing I have learned having gone through a couple of dozen hurricanes in Florida over the decades is to have smaller generators. Unless you live in a very remote location power will be restored within a reasonable time. You can go without conveniences for a while. It ain't gonna kill you. A smaller generator like 2K watts would power your refrigerator, lights, fan and charge your phone. A 2.5 W can do those things and power a small window AC unit. 5 gallons of gas can keep those running for almost a week with a little planning. No need to get a gas guzzling 7K or more unit that uses 3 or 4 gallons a day. |
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Quoted: Everywhere you'd even be able to spend money was closed. Turns out, when there's no power for the cash register and gas pumps, there's no power for anything else in the store. They didn't bother opening up. While we're talking about lessons learned... The morning after, power was out people were bored. They started driving around gawking at all the carnage. They were wasting their gas. Those same people less than a week later would be the ones who's car were out of gas. Quoted: Quoted: Always have cash for times like this. Cards and crypto do no good when the power is out. Everywhere you'd even be able to spend money was closed. Turns out, when there's no power for the cash register and gas pumps, there's no power for anything else in the store. They didn't bother opening up. While we're talking about lessons learned... The morning after, power was out people were bored. They started driving around gawking at all the carnage. They were wasting their gas. Those same people less than a week later would be the ones who's car were out of gas. Our local mom and pop store have opened up several times when the power has been out. They keep a calculator and cash box for times like that. It’s worked out for them pretty well. |
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Quoted: How did you tap into your NG line? Quoted: How did you tap into your NG line? I paid a buddy who's a HVAC guy. They do these sort of gas line things all day for work. I held the flash light and bullshat with him. Basically, unscrew the gas connection after the meter, screw in a tee, run the new line over to your generator, and terminate it with a quick connect fitting. I'm sure there are things to consider like pipe diameter, length, how many BTUs your generator needs, and local codes. He mentioned that if you need moar flow, you can call the gas company out to pull a restrictor out of the meter or something like that. So far, I haven't needed to do that. Quoted: Unless you live in a very remote location power will be restored within a reasonable time. Define reasonable. We're the 3rd largest city (by population) in georgia. It still took them several weeks to get power restored to everybody. It was about a week till they even had power back on the main strip through town so there were functioning traffic signals and stores to go to. When the stores did get power back, it took them a day or two to throw all the rotten food away, then another day or two for deliveries to come in and stock up. After the main arteries in town got powered back up, they spent the next weeks moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. |