Survival Lessons Learned from West Coast Power Outage

In case some of you missed it, there was a power blackout in Southern California and for a time the cause was unknown making people surmise everything from software glitches and hardware failures to terrorist attacks. This affected a reported 6 million people from Los Angeles to San Diego to Yuma, Arizona,....and in a time of the year when some temperatures hit well over 100 degrees.

Good comment received from Secunda, entitled: Notes from the Southern California Blackout of September 8, 2011

The blackout yesterday provided us with a good test of our emergency plans. Some things we did well in, others not so well.

The hand crank radio we purchased for $10 gave us great information. Discovered the power was out all over Southern California, Northern Mexico, and Arizona.

My husband called from Downtown. The Trolley system was down. He caught the bus. He had only one water bottle and his walking shoes at his office.

The highways and roads were choked. Few intersections had working street lights. Most people treated intersections as 'stop sign only' intersections. A 16 mile bus ride took 3 hours.

Cell phone coverage in the area weakened the longer the power outage lasted.

A neighbor asked if the municipal water was safe to drink. Her family had NO emergency water stores. Some water districts were already issuing boil- water orders within just two hours of the outage.

Most grocery stores had to close. The small independent convenient stores who remained opened were swamped with people making last minute or panic purchases of water and ice. Some merchants were over-charging for water and ice. Most gas stations were closed.

The power was off long enough for looting to take place but I have heard of no instances yet where it occurred.

I cooked eggs on the camp griddle over a charcoal grill for supper. We finished all the items in the Frig like the milk that would spoil soonest.

LESSONS LEARNED
Store more water at my husband's work site, along with a extra cell phone battery and an alternate communication method.

Identify more routes out of the city he can take if he is forced to walk or bike out.

Store more water and freeze water in a couple of old milk jugs to keep in the freezer.

Keep the cars no less than half filled with gas.

UrbanMan's comments: Thanks Secunda for the excellent comments and your lessons learned.

Your observation of the cell phone infrastructure becoming weaker or less reliable as the power outage went longer is interesting as cellular networks and the repeaters have sometimes both both solar and fuel generation emergency power designed to last at least 24 hours. It would have been interesting to see if text was more reliable than voice communications. During the Hurricane that hit the East Coast, I lost voice comms with some of team, but our texting and e-mail on portable devices was reliable.

I would add a couple things to your lessons learned:

Look at the possibility of buying higher end radios so that your husband can have another means of communications with you as he makes his way home. The FRS/GMRS radios, e.g..talkabouts probably won't do it,....may have to be something in the VHF or UHF band. You hit on additional routes out of the city....this is PACE planning (Primary, Alternate, Contingency and Emergency),.....for not only routes but for communications as practical everything in our plan.

Always have cash handy for those circumstances were ATM's are out and you need to and can buy additional items. It is a rare day I don't have at least $60 or so in my pocket and I always have a couple silver rounds on me as well.

You also hit on your husband having an additional cell phone battery and water. Does he have a Bug Out Bag? Not necessarily a fully equipped Bug Out equipped for a total SHTF scenario, but maybe if your husband wears business clothes, then a bag containing durable clothing to change to, including some hiking boots and a smaller bag with extra water, some food such as nuts, jerky and granola bars, extra water, maybe a fold up rain coat, multi-tool, butane lighter,....you get my drift.

In any case you sound like you have your act together and are using your biggest and best weapon against a collapse type scenario and that is your brain. Thanks again for your comments. Be safe.