Power Out Response Exercise

[Scythe13]

Well, this will be 'poo-poo'ed by a lot of people. But that's fine.

The other day we had a power-cut. Nothing special. Especially the time of day it was at. The time was around 9:30pm, so it was easy enough to simply go to bed. But I decided not to go down that route. I figured it was a great opportunity to check the ease of powering up and getting ready to weather out a 48+ hour power down scenario. Yes it was going to be easy, but I figured it a great excuse to try stuff out and see how well organised and how available the preps were.

First off intermediary light. Torches and candles. All ready within 20 seconds.

Secondly, lock up and lock down. Animals in, lock down the home, draw all black out blinds.

Thirdly, reserve lights and heat. Candles, lights, batteries, that kind of thing.

Bug out bag's by the front door and mini-kits placed on the sofa (instead of putting them on as that would have looked weird if a neighbour had popped over).

Then we went for a quick check up and down the road. The idea was to see if our house was clearly lit up. Could anyone outside tell that we were far from suffering? Success. The house was as dark as the night. From the outside we were suffering as much as any shmoo in the road. Opsec test complete.

Next up we looked at things like spare fuel and generator, but we didn't bother to test any of that gear. Too late in the evening and it wouldn't have been wise. Total opsec screw if we had fired anything up at that time of day.

Food stocks checked, fuel checked, water checked, and lastly defence capabilities checked. We were ready and set to bug in. Total time, less than 20 minutes, including walking up and down the road to check what was going on, and a loft check to see how far the power-cut was reaching.

All in all, I was very happy how quickly we locked in position and were ready. Moreover, my wife started to recognise the need for a torch in every room and things like that. The spare battery obsession and solar charger purchases made total sense now.

We ended up snuggled in bed watching some Disney cartoons online using an iPod, mobile phone WiFi (powered by a power pack gadget), and my micro projector...also powered by a surplus power storage system (check out the Pebble power pack...I love them! Really good stuff. Looking to get a few smaller solar chargers for them soon. PM me any details if you've used a similar system). So we were sitting pretty. We can safely say we were the only people with working internet router's and a projector in Wellington that night.

The moral of the story. Even a small "non-event" situation can be used as a good mini test to see how quickly you can be ready. Plus it will start to show the things you're missing out on in the first few hours of an event.

[Devonian]

Good test and thanks for sharing.

I keep thinking about getting a couple of these portable power packs, but I'm thinking of the larger ones which could power a laptop (or several smaller items) for a few hours, together with a large foldable solar panel that can not only charge the power pack, but also a 12v car battery - problem is I keep putting it off thinking that the technology is improving so quickly that I'll be able to get something X times better next month!

[NorthernRaider]

Good post Scythe, we did a test some time ago, should really do another, one thing that keeps occurring is certain members of this household keep leaving the batteries in the bloody EDC torches and over time they usually go flat ( fair enough) leak ( that's bad) but what drives me mad is both of em can never remember where their own boxes of spare batteries are!!!!

[Barneyboy]

nice one S13 ,I find cartoons very relaxing when im stressed ,must be my inner child

[Scythe13]

(17 September 2014, 09:05)NorthernRaider Wrote: Good post Scythe, we did a test some time ago, should really do another, one thing that keeps occurring is certain members of this household keep leaving the batteries in the bloody EDC torches and over time they usually go flat ( fair enough) leak ( that's bad) but what drives me mad is both of em can never remember where their own boxes of spare batteries are!!!!

Interestingly enough my evil nemesis, I had an issue with the wife just putting all batteries in the same place and not leaving them in the correct spots. The trick, 2 tupperware tubs of different colours. I'd go with red and green. If you can't find those colours, just go for clear plastic and then put some coloured electric tape around the tub. Presto, you know that all the batteries in the green tub should be charged, and anything in the red tub needs to be charged.