Tornado in Chattanooga area!

[Cruel Hand Luke]

I finally have access to the web after the tornado apocalypse here.

I had some damage to the house but nothing major. My neighbor has a 4 foot section of fence harpooned into the side of her house. It looks like it was shot out of a cannon and is just stuck in the side of the house like an arrow stuck in a tree trunk.

Trees and power lines are down EVERYWHERE. Travel is slow going but getting better. In fact the CRG class scheduled for this weekend is having to be rescheduled for May21-22 due to trees and powerlines down at the range.That area was hit hard. But we will simply reschedule and the class WILL go on.

Eight people were killed just a couple of miles from my neighborhood.An elderly man was found in his chair 50 feet out in his yard where the storm had propelled him from his house....... I am BLESSED to just have the minor property damage that we have. My wife road out the storm in a closet as 100 mph winds hit our neighborhood.

I was still at work on Wednesday when the storm hit our neighborhood. It took me an hour and a half to get home...It normally takes 15 minutes. But with EVERY road leading to my place blocked by downed trees and power lines it was slow going. I finally got to within 500 yards of my neighborhood and made the decision to "bug back" to the house on foot. I grabbed my sneaky bag and rifle bag , threw them over my shoulder and started walking past the roadblock when they got the word that they could open the road....so I went back and got in the car and drove the rest of the way home.

Yesterday was "clean up day" in the neighborhood. People were clearing out downed trees and shingles and pieces of fences from their yards. There was no power so generators were good things to have to run power tools and to keep freezers from thatwing out. Ice was a commodity impossible to find in stores. If you have a freezer I strongly suggest you have either a generator or a few bags of ice in the freezer to keep things cold longer.

We talk about this all the time, but this just reinforces it....

Things you NEED to have on hand.

1. Water. We never lost water, but Ringgold Ga city water has been turned off. You can go without food for a few days. Water is crucial.

2. CASH. If electricity is out stores can't run cards...No cash..no gas.

3. BAtteries. No electricity...no radio,tv,lights,etc. Make sure you have batteries to run your flashlights and radios and lanterns.

4. Gasoline. Never a bad thing to have some extra gas on hand. I think everyone in a 10 mile radius with a chainsaw was running it yesterday. Gas powered generators need gas too.

5. non perishable food. There are still A LOT of folks with no power here and that means stuff in the fridge will be bad. But a simple Coleman stove and some cans of soup will get oyu by for a while.

6. Toilet paper. Make sure you have toilet paper.

7. A car charger for your cell phone!!!!!!! My wife's phone was dead and could not be charged because no electricity . But I have a car charger for mine and that made a big difference being able to still communicate by charging it in the car.

8. A good attitude. We all just got out and did what needed to be done. No sniveling no whining. Yes it sucks that stuff is torn up, but it is not going to move itself off yuor lawn and out of the street. If you are doing something you don't have tome to say "Woe is me".

This is not "end of the world" stuff. It is simply a natural disaster just like people have lived through for thousands of years. Things will be back to normal in a few days. But everyone who thought ahead at some point and stashed a few rudimentary supplies will have it easier than those who said "that will never happen here".

[MacGyver]

Nice post mortem follow up!

We often fail to learn from our experiences.

A friend of mine is known for saying, "When it all goes south, people will be killing each other over toilet paper and cigarettes within a week!"

[LI0NSFAN]

Great post, glad to hear you are all ok. My prayers go out to all affected. Keep up the great view on things, it's amazing how contagious positivity is.

[buck1032]

Excellent post and I would like to add something that I do. In our deep freezer I keep 8 one gallon jugs of frozen water. Its a two fold purpose, 1 the ice will keep the frozed goods longer and two once the ice melts I now have water to drink.

Edited April 29, 2011 by buck1032
spellin'

[Cruel Hand Luke]

The gallon jugs of water is excellent too.

Another thing is an AC power inverter and I'm actually going to get one now. Use it to run other stuff from the car...a "portable generator".

My list was not really intended to be an "all inclusive" list it was more a "off the top of my head " list of stuff I think is important.

Obvious additions are...

First Aid Kit (not just bandaids), but capable of handling more serious stuff...chainsaws and other power tools can be dangerous. So can nails in boards.

A tarp. Might need it to keep weather out or to cover up stuff, or to make a tent. Tarps are good multi-purpose things to have.

Garbage bags. They can be used like little tarps to help cover broken windows.

A pot big enough to boil water in. We didn't need to, but some folks did.

A camp stove and propane to run it. If your stove is electric then cooking and boiling is more difficult if there is no electricity. If you have a propane operated stove or grill then you are functional to cook and boil. Get an extra tank. They are like $25 and that way you can always have a full one in reserve.

[ttocswob]

We all just got out and did what needed to be done.

Words of wisdom. Never ceases to amaze me - after every disaster, they always interview some "dependent" on TV crying, "Why don't somebody come and help us?" While in the background or off camera, someone is there DOING just that.

Glad you're OK, Luke. My daughter & family are in Cleveland with minor damage.

[Cruel Hand Luke]

Words of wisdom. Never ceases to amaze me - after every disaster, they always interview some "dependent" on TV crying, "Why don't somebody come and help us?" While in the background or off camera, someone is there DOING just that.

Glad you're OK, Luke. My daughter & family are in Cleveland with minor damage.

Thanks. I pray that they are doing well and have all they need.

[Oh Shoot]

Still 55K EPB customers without juice. Including my mom, where I am. Staying down here still she gets power back. One block off East Brainerd Rd. Might as well be out in the boonies. No real damage here though, very grateful for most of Hamilton County being spared the worst. So sorry for the Apison and Bradley County deaths, and of course, north 'Bama and GA, sigh.

Phone still works, and a neighbor has power restored, so can charge my laptop daily now, connecting with dialup. Since all the cable and DSL folks need AC powered modem, this is a case where dinosaur internet technology wins out. And yeah, charged phone in car.

- OS

[Sheepdog]

Add to the list: Battery operated radio.

We lost power around 6:30 pm, and didn't get it back until about 2:30 am. Inconveniently, my cell phone battery died around 7:00 pm. As a result, I had no idea how bad it really was out there. If I had known, I would have put myself and my kids down in the basement for the night. In retrospect, it's scary to think how lucky we were.

[Guest hillbilly007]

Luke:

Thanks for the first hand account. I have always tried to learn from others that have gone through hard times. Glad that you survived. I've got people in Chattanooga and in Ringgold that also made it through and are now dealing with the clean-up. As a follow-up to your comment on water, the survival forums I lurk on say a person in a hot / humid environment should take in 4 to 6 liters of "fluids" per day. They recommend a mix of water and electrolyte solutions to prevent dehydration. I've gotta go and recalculate my stash after all that has happened.

Good luck and Godspeed!

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I'm sorry so many folks got hurt too.

Maybe the ultimate solution is to have an RV parked near the house. If all the utilities fail, you could still live halfway normal in the RV for quite awhile. That is assuming you are just in a utility-outage area rather than in a storm-damage area. If the storm is heavy enough to screw up the house, then it will probably have completely wasted the RV before it gets around to messing up the house. Maybe heavy weather would slam the RV into the house making things even more worser for both RV and house.

One trivial thing I wished I had was a decent thermos. I never need a thermos, and so never had one for decades. But when you have to boil coffee on the camp stove in the back yard, it is a lot of trouble just for a cup of coffee. It would make more sense to make a days worth of coffee in the morning and fill up a thermos, so you don't have to go boiling coffee on the camp stove several times a day. Silly, yeah. But still...

The problem in Chatt about electric preparedness, is that we don't often get damaging weather. Have heard it said that the surrounding mountains helps keep bad weather out, but dunno. Some surrounding areas seem to get socked more often than Chatt anyway, at least up til this year.

Since outages do not happen very often around here, it never seems worth the money and time to stay real vigilant.

Hadn't thought highly of an inverter you hook up to the car or truck, but that may be pretty cost-effective for outages that only happen once every few years? Am ignorant of car electrical systems. How many watts of inverter can you drive from a typical alternator (for many hours non-stop) without burning up the alternator? Would it be cost-effective to install a heavy-duty alternator in yer favorite vehicle and maybe some good-quality quick-connects so the inverter can be securely, quickly and easily attached?

When we had some storm outages years ago I did some preparations, and have been maintaining preps good for the short outages we typically get.

LED Headlights are fabulous. I have a bunch of headlights. Finally even got wife addicted to headlights though she was repulsed by the nerdy nature of them for years. Even the really bright ones will run a long time on a set of batts, and I usually feed em rechargeables. I keep a couple dozen charged NIMH AA batts in a plastic box, and dozens of AA and AAA alkalines in another box. If the power is out, if you have a headlight at least you can see wherever you happen to be looking.

The little Fenix TK15 flashlight is real bright and came in handy a couple of times.

Have an Energizer 2-LED "tent light" that will run something like 40+ hours on a set of AA batts. It is barely bright enough to read by if you have a book right next to the light, but it is bright enough so you can walk around a room without bumping into anything. From the last outage a couple of months ago had been meaning to buy a tent light for every room, but hadn't got around to it. I don't care for candles indoors. Too much of a fire hazard.

Have three Grundig shortwave/AM/FM radios that run a long time on a set of batts. I keep several so I don't have to carry one radio to different parts of the house to listen to the radio. Feed em rechargeable AA NIMH most of the time. The Grundigs got a lot of use in the outage.

Made plans a long time ago for short to several-days outages. A typical 1500 VA computer UPS might only run a desktop computer for 25 minutes, but it has the surge-protection and buck-boost that benefits every day. They ride out the typical few-minutes random outages so you can keep working day by day.

If you just run a laptop or small appliances, they will run for a couple of hours or more. I had 3 APS XS-1500's on various computers, and they were good for nearly 8 hours of recharging cellphone and batts, and running a laptop. I shut em down right after the outage and would turn em on one at a time as needed for low-power usage.

Have had a Xantrex Powersource 400 in the bedroom for awhile. It is a 400 VA UPS with a 40 AH battery bank. Got it mainly to make sure the CPAP breathing machine would run all night if power went out. It is a real champ. If you don't draw but small amounts of power, it will run more than 24 hours, and is reasonably cost-effective.

Xantrex doesn't seem to sell that model anymore. Northern tools sells a nearly-identical unit, NPower Portable Power System 400 watts, for $169. I get the impression it is nearly identical to the Xantrex product, but dunno if the quality control is the same. It would run a tiny TV and a light bulb or small fan for a long time.

NPower Portable Power System — 400 Watts | Portable Power Solutions | Northern Tool + Equipment

They sell a more powerful model, the NPower Portable Power System — 1800 Watts, but it is $400 and only has a 60 AH battery bank. If you've just gotta have more than 400 watts for a few minutes, the 1800 watt model would be worthy. Perhaps in a kitchen if you want to nuke an occasional frozen dinner. But only 60 AH isn't enough backup to run high power very long.

NPower Portable Power System — 1800 Watts | Portable Power Solutions | Northern Tool + Equipment

It might not be foolish to put several 400 watt, 40 AH units in different rooms in the house. Not real expensive, and if the power goes out a few hours you would operate about the same as usual. If the SHTF in a serous outage, you could run one at a time and get by a day or two before you need to recharge them all.

Years ago I had built a long-term, low power UPS designed to run for at least a day at a modest output level. It had several Guardian AGM 100 AH batteries, a StatPower 40 amp three-stage charger, and a modest StatPower 600 watt inverter. In a case with caster wheels. It has mostly been sitting on float charge in the shop for years. Power hasn't gone out enough to exercise it except every year or two.

After the power went down, I dragged that heavy-ass SOB into the house only to discover that the AGM batteries have lost their ability to hold a charge. They are at least 10 years old which is beyond the use-by date, and they should have been exercised more anyway. So it is a nice UPS that was worthless in the storm and needs several hundred dollars of new AGM batteries just so it can probably sit un-used for another 10 years.

The basic plan was to have enough battery power to run for a day, and then drag out a portable generator to recharge the batts daily in case of a long term outage. I don't think it is that bad a plan, except if you only need the stuff every few years, it just sits there until it is worn out. A waste of money.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Was looking at the current crop of generators. If somebody happened to have a tractor, a PTO (power take off) generator would be a no-brainer for emergency power. They are not THAT expensive, and look heavier-built than many. No extra engine to keep up. As long as the tractor will run, you would have enough generator to run about the whole house (assuming a medium-to-large tractor).

Looks like you can get PTO on some trucks, but doesn't look like modern Jeeps or whatever can be outfitted with PTO.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

We got such good use out of the old Energizer Tent Light in the storms, I went looking for some more. Wanted an emergency tent light in several rooms of the house, easily available in an outage.

The old-style Tent Lights had 2 dim LED's, ran on 4 AA batteries, and would provide dim light for several nights on a set of batteries. Not a lot of light, but long runtime and less of a fire hazard than oil lamps or emergency candles.

The old Energizer tent lights are no longer available, but Energizer now makes a giant big-brother. It is shaped like the old tent light but bigger, runs on 4 D cells, and has 8 LED's. The Energizer Weather Ready Lantern.

Amazon.com: Energizer Weather Ready Folding Area Lantern: Sports & Outdoors

The output is about 100 Lumens on bright setting. The medium setting doesn't seem much dimmer than the bright setting. There is also a nightlight setting that is very dim except in total darkness. I haven't run down a set of batteries to measure runtime, but user reviews place the runtime at several nights of lighting.

It has a handle and can be used as an old-style lantern for walking around inside or out. It can be folded against the mirrored reflector for 180 degree directional lighting or folded out to illuminate 360 degrees.

I got a few of the lights to keep in the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms. They work great in a completely dark room. The advantage to these devices is a long runtime during emergency rather than a blinding bright light.

I wouldn't expect fabulous performance for emergency light out in a driving ice storm, though perhaps it could do that. Anyway they seem a good gadget for interior emergency light.

[Guest adamoxtwo]

I am sorry for the whole situation. I am glad that you and yours made it through. It kinda makes you wonder why we (as a society) haven't made it mandatory for houses without a basement to be built with a storm shelter on the property? Especially with how flimsy houses are being built today. Aside from a tornado you can use it when the Zombies come!

Another thing that would be nice it to be able to get a county sponsored First Aid course going through the local EMT's. They could recommend a first aid kit for more serious disasters and potentially provide training on basic first aid and perhaps how to administer an I.V. Just a thought I may look into that with Montgomery County. For those in the Military a basic combat life savers course. Could be an inexpensive course to run (supplies only really) if the EMT's are willing and it would be in their best interest to do so.