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Hurricane Harvey AAR
8 September 2017, 09:04,
#11
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
My friends in Florida are all "preppers" as are most of that state's long term residents. They would ot call themselves preppers, they are simply ready for the next storm.

If you live there for long you will have the 5000w gen-set, a water-bob for the bathtub, lighting, cooking gear, chainsaws of various types, and stores of fuel. Most of them also have bolts installed in their window frames and have pre-cut plywood sheets that fit onto them. They install the plywood and secure it using wing nuts, then remove it after the storm. Some have roll down covers, like small garage doors, on each window and doors.


Looks like they will need all of the above MB, if they stay put or not.....think i would bugger off out of it ,there again the size of the storm is bigger than Wales so where would i go............over to your place .....where else ?.... will bring pickled onions.... forty pints of homemade beer ....hammer and nails....for repairs to your front porch ....things could get a bit wild after beer.
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8 September 2017, 10:29,
#12
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
Those folks have ridden out so many storms they do not even consider leaving for anything less than a Cat 4. I don't think they even take off from work if it is not at least a category 3. It is too late to leave now even if the storm draws more power. Last night they were saying the roads were completely gridlocked.

The people that waited until now to "bugg out" are having some real problems. Fuel supplies have been depleted and if you look at a map of Florida you will see that if you leave Miami in the south and drive north you will run out of gas before you get out of Florida and there is no fuel available along the road! Florida is about 1000km south to north.

Every time they do one of these evacuations they learn anew that it is a completely impossible feat unless they start a full week ahead of time. That was why the administrators in Texas did not try to evacuate Houston.

Good luck with that BOB and hoofing it concept thing. You are going to have to be a really fast walker!

Everyone that has a relative they could stay with anywhere else and could afford a plane ticket was taking that route.

At this point the projected path of the storm has changed and it is expected to run straight up the middle of the state, then across the state of Georgia where it will still be a strong tropical depression when it reaches Atlanta, GA. By the time it gets that far it will probably downgrade to "tropical storm" status. After about three days journey it will get to me as a cold miserable two day rain storm.

The real push was to get as many people out of the south Florida area as was possible. That entire area from Miami south is less than 50 feet above sea level and most of it is right at sea level. Many of the "keys" (small island chain along the south coast) are less than 6 feet above seal level at high tide. They will be completely submerged by any significant storm surge. If you tried to stay down there your death was assured.

Florida is really only a big sand bar and its continued existence is a direct contradiction to the theory of global warming! According to Al Gore's first book half the place should already be gone.

BTW, Florida is provided with power by several nuke plants spaced up and down the state. Those stations have been powered down and are off line at this point. They are all built to withstand these events and the proper precautions have been taken.

That means that much of the state has been taken off grid on purpose for safety reasons.
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8 September 2017, 19:21,
#13
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
Another thing I need to mention is that in the U.S. a "mandatory evacuation" does not mean you really have to leave! They do not search from house to house forcing people onto buses and shipping them to a refugee center.

It is an announcement the authorities use to cover their liability during the disaster. They do not care if you stay, just don't blame them when you wake up in OZ walking a yellow brick road with some girl named Dorthy.

Fact is that most of the officials are in storm shelters waiting out the storm on the spot. They want to be present for the immediate photo opps and on the spot interviews as soon as the water recedes and the wind stops.

Many people ignore the "orders" and stay to protect their property.

And there is the aspect that most of the time the weather service exaggerates the storms power. the present tracking information has the storm making landfall as a cat 4 on empty beaches, decreasing to cat 3 half way up the coast, and down to cat 2 by the time it reaches the northern population centers. The numbers that have evacuated from the northern areas is very low.

Lots of stuff is going to get blown away and damaged and there will be thousands of vehicles flooded and damaged beyond repair (hundreds of thousands of "flood cars" will hit the used car lots all over the nation. they will smell like mold forever). Houses will need rehab and all that.

On the other side of the coin, the two hurricanes in succession are creating the largest boom in the building industry in the past 10 years! Construction crews will be busy rebuilding Texas and Florida for the next year.

This is unlike Katrina where they simply walked away from their largely uninsured, low value properties and never rebuilt huge areas of New Orleans, allowing nature to reclaim those areas. Florida and Texas will be rebuilt!

Billions will be spent on repairs and huge chunks of the physical money reserves held by the insurance companies will have to be released into the economy. Every sheet of plywood, panel of dry wall and every hot water heater in the U.S. is headed to one of those two areas as we speak.

Just imagine how many nails it will take to rebuild the two areas. How may compressors, generators and power tools will be bought or replaced.

As I said in another post when dealing with Harvey. Most of the U.S. coastal areas count the age of their homes to the last huge hurricane that wiped everything out. They lived in the old house for bla..bla..bla.. and built the new place after Irma hit...

It is the life they live in our coastal areas.
__________
Every person should view freedom of speech as an essential right.
Without it you can not tell who the idiots are.
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8 September 2017, 21:37,
#14
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
This is information from a friend that lives in Texas. He remained in place during Harvey and is there now still coping with the situation.

This is his list of priorities. It is not MY list or opinion. It is information from someone on the ground in the middle of this mess. If you think you can do without 3/4 of the goods on this list or go down it throwing things out because "this is England" during your own disaster then I advise rethinking your approach.

I know from reading you guys posts for years that you do not have enough, but you feel like you are fine and if you are not it will just have to do. It does not just have to do and right now people who are British subjects are dying on small islands because they are in a situation where everything they have and do is not enough.

Remember, this is not homestead prep, or lights out overnight prep, this is life ending disaster prep.

______________________________________________

Some things I have noticed during a natural disaster.

• In this age of communication as never before in History, the hardest thing to get is valid information. We had internet as long as the power was on. We had Cell service throughout. I just installed the Zellow app on my phone. It allows access to information going on right now.
• Batteries are still essential but they are not enough any more. You have to have some way of charging cell phones for communication and obtaining information. I have a small “Justin” aux cell phone charger, a small “antigravity” battery charger and jump starter and a large battery pack jump started that will run or charge various devices. These items have to be well maintained and charged for when you need them.
• A (or more) generator is essential. They keep your food cold/frozen, your rechargeable devices charged and provide light and other amenities. They also can be used to run necessary medical equipment. It is important that you use your generator to its fullest. If it is on have everything that it can handle plugged in to recharge while you have it on. I only ran mine two hours every six hours to conserve gasoline and reduce wear and tear on the generator. You must have oil for the generator as well. It is continuous running and will use or at the very least break down the lubricating qualities of the oil. You must have sufficient oil in the machine or it will break and then you have no generator. Additionally, most generators have an oil level cutoff switch that will not allow the generator to run if the oil level drops below a certain point. It will appear to have oil in it but it will not run unless you raise the level. The only way to do that is to add oil.
• A DC/AC Inverter is good to have because you can create 110v AC from your vehicle battery. I have a 2000W Inverter.
• Fuel. You don’t just need gasoline for your car. You need gasoline for machinery (mowers/tractors, chainsaws, GENERATORS, and lanterns (gasoline type Coleman lanterns). If your vehicle or other equipment is diesel powered then you have to include diesel as well. Butane/propane. Butane burners can be used for cooking or heat. Butane BBQ grills for cooking. Butane Coleman stoves for cooking. Gasoline can be stored in regular gas cans or in any equipment that has a gas tank. Fill all equipment gas tanks whether they will be used or not. I filled my tiller tank and I did not intend to till the garden during the hurricane but I had that gas if I needed it. I also have a 27 gal tank on my boat. That is a lot of gasoline that I can use for a lot of purposes.
• Flashlights and lanterns. There are some very inexpensive but very serviceable lanterns and flashlights that have manually windup battery chargers in them. In fact they were the only lanterns that I have that would work, new batteries or not. I have two other battery powered fluorescent bulb lanterns that would not work when I needed them the most. The $12 Harbor Freight windups worked great. You don’t need to light up the world, just enough to see at night. You should have a very good, strong, unbreakable flashlight on hand all the time, which would include hurricanes. Plenty of batteries of all kinds is a must as well.
• Water. Of course buy all the bottled drinking water that you can and use it for that. Secondly, store and mark as such, as much potable tap water as you can. Certainly 5 gallon jugs purchased and kept for that purpose is preferable but any sanitary container capable of holding water should be filled and kept separately from other water. Thirdly, any other container not already in use should be filled with water. This includes tubs, buckets, children’s swimming pools, whatever... for flushing toilets and general washing of muddy items (you will have some mud after a hurricane). You cannot store too much water. One of my friends has an above ground pool. He has 27,000 gallons of water on hand for those non-drinking purposes. But still, you cannot have too much water. And, just because the water comes back on after an emergency situation does not mean it is safe to drink at that point. Having a supply beyond what you will ever need is not a bad idea.
• Food. Food should be of the non-perishable variety. Canned or dried foods. Peanut butter is a good food. Sardines, or canned fish is good energy food and after you eat a tin of sardines, you’re not hungry any more. Food is not really going to be an issue after a hurricane. If you had a freezer then you’re likely going to have some food you have to eat very quickly. Generators are a good thing, but they are not failproof.


List.

• Smart Phone and backup cell phone
• Recharging devices. Justin, Antigravity, 5InOne
• Batteries: D, C, AA, AAA, 9volt
• Generator. 6000W, Tailgators
• DC/AC Inverter
• 5 gal gasoline/day without power + plenty of 2 cycle oil.
• 5 gal diesel for Kubota
• 3 – 5 gal propane tanks. 2 – 7 gal propane tanks. Small bottle charger.
• Fill all vehicles and other equipment
• Two hand crank lanterns. One hand crank flashlight. Mag light. Two small unbreakable flashlights. One large unbreakable flashlight.
• 2 people. One case of water per day without water. Potable water – 5 gal per day without water. Non-potable water – 5 gal per day without water.
• Food. Sardines, crackers, canned goods, dry cereals, dehydrated foods,
__________
Every person should view freedom of speech as an essential right.
Without it you can not tell who the idiots are.
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8 September 2017, 22:31,
#15
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
Going off this list .....i have it all well covered...... except ....i need a bigger Inverter ...which i know about.....the thing is we do not get hit with hurricane force storms here in the UK ...but the question i would ask MB, given the nature and regularity of these storms over with you ....where do these guys store this stuff and account for flooding and surges of water and high wind pressures ...what and how do they manage ...or is it just impossible if its as bad as we are hearing ....in short are there any special measures`that can be of help to us here.
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9 September 2017, 05:21,
#16
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
Everything does not flood. That is one of the myths being promoted by the media. In Texas only 25% of the land impacted by Harvey flooded. Some of that area was surge flooding so it was over and drained within hours. And many of us refuse to live on flood plains. The insurance is higher and the risk is too great. If you live in a flood plain you will eventually get water, just like if you live on the beach you will eventually get a hurricane.

Irma is carrying less water than Harvey. Only about a foot of rainfall, Harvey had 5 feet. The elevated areas in the central and northern parts of Florida will drain even if flooded. The storm surge does not cover the entire world, just the coastal area. That is generally what the media focuses on because the sight of beached boats and swamped buildings is a big sensation.

You have to remember that everything shown my the media is for attention grabbing impact and not really to inform you of the truth. Same goes for the current predictions. Cat5, Cat 4, sounds bad, but the storm brushes off power as it moves across land and by the time it reaches the northern part of the state it will be cat 2. By the time it reaches Atlanta it will not be a hurricane.

Storage of materials is viewed differently over here. Unless one is just starting independent life as an adult, or lives in an apartment in an urban area where space is a premium and owns only the clothes on their back then storage area is considered a necessity of life. We insist on storage space because we have "stuff". In suburban areas as much as 1/4 of the square footage is storage area with more outdoor space, and most homes are larger than over there.

In addition we do not get rid of our "stuff" if we do not use it more than once a week to live a less encumbered life. We get more stuff. I bet a pint that CH has almost every item on that list stuck away somewhere, or a replacement to use instead.

The guy that dies with the most "stuff" wins!

Room for the workshop is a necessity, as is the place to store the gen-set, and the water, and the food preps, the garden tractor, the chain saws and weed whacker hanging on the wall and the power tools. And all this "stuff" is owned by the average guy next door. They are not even preppers!

Of course we are not talking about "end of the world preps". The average family over here will have a week or two of food in the pantry, most a bit more. Buying in bulk is the present fad as well as cooking family meals. Not everyone is stuffing their face at McDonalds every night, just like not everyone over here weighs 500 pounds.

10 years back hurricane Ike came inland and still had 70mph winds when it reached 1000 miles inland. Trees went down everywhere and the power was off for two weeks. While the winds were still blowing everyone in the neighborhood was out with chain saws moving the wood, running cables for the gen-sets from one house to another, snatching batteries out of the vehicles and hooking up inverters to run lights and fans, duct taping deep freezers shut to preserve cold air and cooking food on the propane grills. The whole neighborhood turned out.

I am a poor soul and I have more than 500 sq/ft of storage space including the workshop with space under two of the areas for parking garden equipment and storing lumber. Also does not count the full preps I keep in the vehicles. I could live a week out of either one of those suckers.

I also selected my place based on security from flooding and several other factors such as access to a large body of water, wood and open rural country.

If you do not have built in storage space you rent it. I am not kidding. If you live in an apartment you rent storage space or it is included in the apartment contract. Storage space rental is big business over here. I own the outbuildings I have because it is cheaper to buy the materials and build on site than to rent the same size space for a year.

You see we expect the weird, unexpected and excessive. That is our norm for disaster prep and you can not deal with the excesses unless you have the proper "stuff". Also one of the reasons many Americans view your preps as totally inadequate. They would be for our needs.
__________
Every person should view freedom of speech as an essential right.
Without it you can not tell who the idiots are.
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9 September 2017, 16:48,
#17
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
I would like to wish all who are in the path of these hurricanes safe passage and the best of luck.....and hope you all make it through unscathed ....stay safe as possible SS .
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9 September 2017, 18:53,
#18
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
Reading CH's list above surprised me. Apart from the generator, which is on my list (I have a big Woolf one lined up), we have most of the rest in the proportions appropriate for our situation. OH is currently sorting out the requirements for a turbine and solar panels. These would not be going on the Grid, but to power our own facilities. We have a lot of water here as well. Water butts everywhere (galva is best to keep water sweeter) and a large pond that holds thousands of litres. We also have the big cistern under our house. Storage barns and three garages keep our equipment stored and safe. God, I hope we never find ourselves in the path of a hurricane though, it must be really scary! Good luck to everyone over there!.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
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9 September 2017, 19:02,
#19
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
If anyone is watching the predictions they might notice that the storm path has been moved to the west coast and by the time it reaches Florida the eye of the storm may miss the peninsula. If that happens an entirely new problem will arise since the storm will again gain power over the Gulf waters and then strike the Gulf Coast, where they were not preparing for it and have not evacuated.

The projected path has changed each day for the past week, sometimes by hundreds of miles.

The cold front high pressure system I spoke of earlier in the week and a huge high pressure system in the Atlantic is blocking the entire storm system and moving it west.

This is the problem with calling for evacuations. The south Florida area will lose billions of dollars in wasted time and materials if the storm bypasses them and the next time there is a "mandatory evacuation" declared the people will sit and laugh rather than leave.

Remember that even though the news services treat these storms as if they were living entities they are not. They are guided and pushed about by the pressure systems around them so as those systems move and change the path of the storm changes. The storm itself does not just "make a decision" and run somewhere.

BTW, I just read that there is a cruise ship "stranded" in the Atlantic and unable to reach port due to the storm. The passengers are in "survival mode" with a well stocked pantry of gourmet foods and a well supplied bar.

Is that really considered survival?
__________
Every person should view freedom of speech as an essential right.
Without it you can not tell who the idiots are.
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9 September 2017, 22:16,
#20
RE: Hurricane Harvey AAR
Once long ago in a parallel universe our C2 twin-engine Carrier Onboard Delivery (COD) aircraft was delayed in Bermuda whilst the next stop on our milk run was battened down for weathering a hurricane. Your RN lads entertained us with a sumptuous feast and generous doses of the Pusser's rum as we waited for the storm to move on. In a few days our next destination ship was positioned and ready to take on its mail for the crew, aircraft repair parts and a bonus gift of rum for the Skipper from our Bermudian friends.

73 de KE4SKY
In
"Almost Heaven" West Virginia
USA
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