A True Story of Rural American Self Reliance

[CharlesHarris]

Vern Humphrey is an old friend who wrote this article we use in our CERT training.

A Survival Story, By Vern Humphrey, Mountain View, Arkansas

On Tuesday, February 5th, 2008, Super Tuesday, I was in the Stone County Clerk's office in Mountain View, Arkansas. I was County Election Commissioner, there to supervise the primary election. My wife is Assistant Director of Nursing at the local nursing home.

We had warnings of storms and tornadoes. Late afternoon, we heard that the town of Clinton, 25 miles to our southwest, had been hit by a tornado. Soon we heard that other closer towns had been hit. At 6:00 PM I directed poll workers to lock down the precincts and evacuate, and to return after the storm had passed.

At 6:30 PM, the tornado tore through the eastern part Mountain View. All AC mains power in the county went out. Cell phone signals were lost. We retained landline telephone communication with most of the county, but could not make long distance calls, nor could we contact the eastern section of the county. The county hospital was hit, only the operating room remaining intact. Patients were evacuated to the nursing home. Roads were blocked for days with fallen power lines, debris, and so on.

I won't bore you with how we had to recover ballot boxes and voting machines -- but it took seven days to collect everything and get certifiable results. In the meantime, our county was cut off, with no AC mains power. This tornado tore a half mile to a mile wide swath through the state, 123 miles long!

My wife and I put our family survival plan in effect, moving into our cellar, heating with a wood stove, cooking on a Coleman gasoline stove, lighting the cellar with a Coleman lantern. We survived in comfort until the power went back on at 4:00 PM on Monday, the 11th. This is hardly the first time we have put our survival plan into action -- our county has had two tornadoes and two ice storms in the last 12 years. So here are some tips based on a useful learning curve:

Make a plan -- a realistic plan.

• Start with a realistic situation -- not TEOTWAWKI, but one based on actual survival incidents where you live. Here it is ice storms and tornadoes. They have two similarities -- long term loss of power, and physical isolation (due to trees and power lines down on the roads.)

• Develop a "Long Term Plan" is a statement of what you plan to accomplish.

• Resource the plan. Acquire the things you will need. If you cannot afford some things now, plan to acquire them later. This is sometimes called a "Mid Term Plan."

• Execute the plan -- the execution phase is the "Short Range Plan." Don't wait for a tornado or earthquake -- take some vacation time and put your plan into action. If you plan to walk from Atlanta, Georgia to Nantahala carrying your gun safe and Dillon 550B ammunition loading machine, you better actually try that before the disaster strikes.

• Evaluate your execution. Note what worked and what didn't work. Make a list of the things that you wish you had, plan to acquire them.

Stress the elements of survival. I won't list them in any particular order, because one element may be critical in one situation, but not in another.

• Shelter. This is where you will live. You may have to live there for days, weeks, months, or even a year or more. A cave or tarp under a tree is not a satisfactory long term shelter. My shelter is my cellar -- fully finished, with reinforced concrete walls, two steel girders running the width of the house, and two exits – both stairs and double doors exiting outside. It is furnished with a hide-a-bed sofa, and a 8X12 ft. "machine room" where the HVAC, water heater, and so on reside. There is room enough for my gun safe, a freezer, and shelves containing canned goods, batteries, etc.

• Food. A month’s supply of canned goods is in the "machine room."

• Water. We are on a rural water system, so no need for a pump. We also keep a gallon of bleach in the machine room so as to be able to chemically treat creek water if needed.

• Heat. The temperature was -10 degs C. Our cellar stays at 55 degrees year-round, so a wood stove was adequate. This characteristic of underground shelters makes them especially desirable.

• Electric Power. A portable 1.35 KW generator is in the machine room. I set it outside and it only to keep food in our freezer from thawing.

• Light. My wife and I have flashlights everywhere -- in the pickup truck, in the car, on the bedside tables, in the machine room. We stock candles, oil lamps, Coleman fuel (2 gallons) in there. Our Dual Fuel Coleman lantern will burn regular gasoline, too.

• Cooking. A Coleman Dual Fuel camp stove in the machine room.

• Communications. We keep a hand-cranked dynamo AM/FM radio which can receive NOAA weather alerts. We plan to get our ham licenses and add a 2 meter transceiver after this experience. Fortunately, telephone service within our county has never failed us.

• Sanitation. We have a half-bath in the basement, and with gravity water and a stove to heat it, we were able to keep clean. However, not everyone was so fortunate, as I noticed when working closely with others during the emergency.

• Transportation. We have 4X4 SUVs, and keep 10 gallons of gas in Jerricans in our garden shed. We also have tire chains for winter.

• Tools. Forget "toy survival tools." The most important disaster tool is a chain saw! During the last ice storm, we had to cut about 20 trees that had broken or bent over blocking our 1/4-mile entrance road top the house. We had a couple on the 0.6 mile common road, too.

• Protection. I have a concealed carry permit and am always armed, except in government buildings where it is prohibited, such as polling places -- dang it!). Our isolation (3 1/2 miles down the county road, 0.6 miles down the common road, and a quarter mile down our drive) also offers some protection, but delays 911 response time, so we must take the initiative to ensure security from intruders intending to do harm.

• Community. We worked together with neighbors to help save and provide necessities to our neighbors. They would do the same for us.


The tornado tore a 123-mile long swath through Arkansas and Mountain View was one town hit, destroying the hospital, ambulance service, and a critical fire station. We were cut off from the outside world (although some telephone service remained within our county.) We were without AC mains for a week.

Not long afterwards, we lost power for another three days when a snowstorm disrupted our jury-rigged system. Then we experienced TWO floods, one after the other -- producing a “100-year” flood. Then, a few months later, the remnants of Hurricane Ike went through the Ozarks and we lost power for another six days.

Finally, on Monday, the 26th of January, 2009, we had the “mother of all ice storms.” It began as heavy fog in freezing weather. The fog froze on the trees, sheathing them with ice. The weight of over 1 cm thick ice was too much for the trees, which began to split and break. Power poles were broken off. People in rural areas were truly isolated -- so many trees were down that we literally had to chain-saw our way to the highway. In my case, being 3.5 miles down a county road, 0.6 miles down a common road (shared with one other family) and a quarter mile of private drive, it took two days to cut a path out.

The one bright spot -- although the power pole at the end of the common road was broken off, neighbors working to clear that the county road realized that pole also carried my phone line. So, they cut the pole in sections, and dragged the sections aside as best they could -- the sections held together by my phone line.

So I still had telephone service. Until Saturday, when the postman came. The sections of power pole made inconvenient for him to reach the mail box. So he thoughtfully cut my phone line, so he could drag the sections out of the way. And, of course, we can't get a cell phone signal up here in the mountains. This got me thinking about getting my ham license and two-meter radio, so that I could access the repeater in town. The Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (like Raynet in UK) maintains contact with the Sheriff’s Office.

Other than the postman cutting our phone line, our survival plan worked well. First, as soon as the power went out, I cleaned out the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. I took all the frozen food downstairs and put it in the chest freezer in the basement "machine room." With the freezer as full as I could get it with frozen food and freezer packs, I closed it up, took the generator outside and fired it up. For 13 days, I ran the portable generator two to three times a day -- and it kept the food in the freezer solid. The value of stored food saved exceeded the cost of the generator. Thirteen days of operation, two to three sessions a day, each time allowing the generator to run out of fuel, burned nine gallons of gasoline.

Some of my neighbors have large full-panel, whole house generators, using them for lights, TV, air conditioning in summer and other purposes. This is expensive, because more powerful generators of 10kW or larger may burn a gallon of fuel per hour of run time. Unless you have a 500-gallon propane tank dedicated to fuel only the backup generator, fuel is hard to come by in a survival situation. It is impractical and dangerous to store large quantities of gasoline in your shed. Gasoline and diesel will “go stale” unless treated with a stabilizer. Stored fuel should be used and replaced yearly. Since the tornado last February, I store only 15 gallons of gas, and use the generator for running the freezer only.

I started a fire going in our Buck™ stove that heats the cellar, and as soon as I managed to clear a driveable passage out, I started cutting the downed trees into firewood lengths, hauling and splitting them. My Buck stove will take a ½ metre log, but I cut them to shorter lengths which makes them easier to split by hand. l.

Over a long haul, the fire burns down at night, so you need to start a fire each morning. I keep at least a full box of Starter Logs â„¢ in the basement. These are made of wax and sawdust, and can be broken into cakes that start fires easily. If you stack split wood in the stove with a cake of Starter Logg under the stack, you don't need kindling to quickly start a roaring stove fire.

My wife is a nurse -- she's the Assistant Director of the local nursing home. When we got warning of a coming ice storm, she packed up and went into town -- the nursing home put her and several other nurses up in a motel room, so they could keep staff on hand when other nurses couldn't get into work.

She finally came home on Friday, the 30th. And rearranged everything. Me, I was comfortable with a folding table set up in the basement with the camp stove, a pot, spoon, glass and GI canteen cup. That was all I needed. But women need more. Soon we had half the kitchen down in the basement -- pots, pans, seasonings, and so on. Plus her makeup, knitting and other essentials.

Crews from several states were working to restore power. The number of power poles broken exceeded the number of new poles on hand, and our power company had to borrow from other states. Finally, on the evening of Sunday, February 8th, the power came back on. But we didn't get telephone service until the about 6:45 PM on Friday the 13th, and only one number at that (I have a dedicated computer line, which wasn't restored.) When I went down to check on the work, the lines were merely twisted together -- the splice wasn't even wrapped with electrical tape. There was so much noise on the line, conversation was difficult, and of course, Internet connections were impossible. My dedicated computer line was restored (and the other line properly fixed) at 4:00 PM on Friday, the 20th.

As I looked across Lick Fork Creek toward Johnson Ridge, the whole mountain seemed to be speckled yellow -- raw wood showing where trees split under the weight of the ice. The timber is ruined -- anyone who was counting on selling timber will have to put that off for a generation. And, of course, the woods are full of "widow-makers" -- the spilt tops of trees still hanging by a thread.

I cut a year's supply of firewood from fallen and splintered limbs -- and after cutting it, I took down all the dangerous trees around the house, and now have a double supply of firewood.

The lessons here are:

• Survival disasters can occur at any time, and leave you completely cut off.

• Work with your neighbors. Help them and they will help you.

• Disasters can last so long and come so often they aren't fun anymore.

• The key to survival is to anticipate a real disaster situation and plan accordingly.

• Plan to stay where you are, if at all possible, and to stick out the disaster at home. Remember, you have far more stuff in your home than you can possibly carry if you opt to go somewhere else, and you may need all of it.

• Practice your plan. Each time you practice, make a note of what you didn't have but wish you had, and steadily improve your plan and your equipment list.

• Economize. Scarce resources (like fuel) may be difficult to replace in a survival situation. Use them sparingly.

• Choose your survival tools for utility, not for cleverness. I use a real ax, splitting maul and chainsaw, not a "multi-purpose survival tool." If I need game I use my ordinary hunting rifle, not a folding compromise "survival" weapon.

• Shoot that damn' postman! (Just kidding 8-)

[MaryN]

I'm in awe of such organisation (and also jealous of your situation in the country).

[Kenneth Eames]

CH, Many thanks for this post. I envy you and your Survival set-up. However, it certainly helps people here to try and emulate what you have achieved. Each step taken gradually, takes us forward until we are able to Survive in comfort. An excellent article. Kenneth Eames.