Preparing for an Ice Storm #1

(This is a picture taken in Cary, NC in 2001 or 2002, I can't remember the year.)

Here is a great post that was posted on Totally Ready on June 11, 2010.

When we were living in North Carolina an ice storm knocked out our power for four days. It was a bit miserable, but now makes for fun stories. We started to hear the crash of trees falling all around us, followed by flashes of blue light from the wires they took down with them. We couldn’t leave the kids in their room, even if they were sleeping through it. We brought them into our bed so we could be sure they were safe. We had a family come over to take showers at our house by candlelight because their well wouldn’t run without electricity (yes, I know it should have been by glow stick instead of candles). I was most surprised at how nicely the chicken nuggets turned out by cooking them in a frying pan over our gas range!

I have some great pictures of the huge pine trees that fell literally right next to the house, one taking out our fence, and one breaking it’s top off when it hit our roof. Now, seven years later our son who was five still talks about our adventure.

There are some simple things I wish I had done for that power outage.

Keeping a bunch of disposable plates, cups, and utensils in the cupboard since we had no dishwasher would have been a huge help. And lots of large trash bags.

A bunch of flashlights and batteries stored up would have been great. Glow sticks would have been even better because lighting a candle or running a flashlight all night for the kids wasn’t an option.

I wish I had had a games which were new and thus exciting.

I wish I had stored more food that couold be eaten without cooking.

I also wished I had taken the advice of the neighbors. Being new to the area, and just moving there from Utah, I thought all of the panic about stocking up at the grocery store for the snow coming was silly. What I didn’t realize is that there are no snowplows for anything except snow removal on the highways, so when it snows, you are stranded. I could have gotten the laundry caught up while I had the chance.