Time for those thousands face freezing without Power stories

[CoolBreeze]

Why?

If you're the head of your household, you have a responsibility to protect your family from all "known issues". The one constant is the weather. You KNOW there's going to come a time when wind, ice, snow causes a power outage. And depending on where you live, you KNOW what those chances are. Taking the elderly out of the equation, I cant see why people don't prepare better.

For instance, I live in the middle of the city, but an area surrounded by trees. The power here goes off at least once a year and often 2 or 3 times. It was off last week for 13 hours. I cant even imagine how people who live way out in the woods would do so without power back-up.

10 years ago I learned of my power issues and decided to do something about it. I purchased a generator that's really earned it's keep. It was a smaller one just to run my gas furnace, so last year I bought a 3600 watt generator for $199. (Thanks Chinese). I've used it three times already including last week.

So with these cheap generators, there's no reason for people to suffer through power failures for the most part. And yet they do...

[fearpeddler]

most people who live in the woods still have ways to heat their home, but a decent generator to power a few major appliances can be as expensive as a cheaply made chrysler...

[fearpeddler]

most people who live in the woods still have ways to heat their home, but a decent generator to power a few major appliances can be as expensive as a cheaply made chrysler...

[Heaven Bound]

27 hours without power - all electric house so no HVAC. Used 5kw gen to heat water and run fridge, with the fireplace to maintain mid 50's in the house as the temps went down in the 20's.

[cgarison]

Having spent the 5 winters in Philly, I have to say the reduced number of power outages in the winter makes it nice. But I do not think that it makes up for the lack of parking when the streets and sidewalks are filled with snow that is not melting fast enough.

[fearpeddler]

back home, we had a coal burning fireplace, and when it got cold enough to take out the power we had a 2nd fridge in the garage that we'd move everything to and we'd just used the fireplace to warm the house, you can buy a winters worth of coal to burn for the price of a few weeks off firewood, thats if you're too lazy to go cut some yourself.

[AmpedNow]

The fact is, power outages are rare. Even when you factor in our spring thunderstorms and winter windstorms, they don't happen often enough or last long enough where many think about complete preparation.

Nothing terrifies me more than the thought of the national power grid going down for several weeks. Martial law would have to be imposed within 24 hours, as looting and rioting would begin in the major cities within a few hours. It would all go downhill from there.

If it happened during winter, the problems would be compounded as millions would lose the ability to keep themselves warm.

[fearpeddler]

actually, my power goes out more here in kanawha county than it did when I lived in the coalfields

[The Interpreter]

That is largely a now versus then comparison. Given the reduced maintenance and manpower at the electric utilities nowadays, outages are much more common than they were years ago. Quite frankly, the national grid is far less reliable than it was in the 1960's. Back then, outages were extremely rare, and almost always fixed very, very quickly. Then there was that 'little' outage in New York City and the Northeast, and it all seemed to gradually go downhill from there.