Just in Case (36 page)

While much emergency planning is appropriate for all scenarios, some preparation is disaster specific. These chapters will deal with specific threats and teach you ways you can prepare and respond in order to minimize your risk, cope in the midst of a crisis, and begin the recovery effort in the aftermath.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

I found
Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness,
a free publication put out by
FEMA
in 2004, to be an excellent resource, and I would urge everyone to order a copy. See the Ready Web site of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, at
www.ready.gov
, for more information.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND ALERT ORGANIZATIONS

These agencies and systems will be of invaluable assistance in keeping you informed about an emergency, ways to get assistance, and how to stay safe.

CERT
stands for Community Emergency Response Team. This program supports local response capability by training volunteers to organize themselves at a disaster site. This is a vital program, as a community may well be on its own for a period of hours or days in a widespread disaster. For information visit
www.citizencorps.gov/cert
.

Citizen Corps
provides opportunities for people to participate in a wide range of activities that make families and communities safer from threats of crime, terrorism, public health emergencies, and natural disasters. Local Citizen Corps Councils bring together leaders in law enforcement, emergency medical response teams, local elected officials, and volunteers to support a community’s emergency services. To find out more about Citizen Corps, visit
www.citizencorps.gov
.

The Department of Homeland Security
issues national safety alerts and also provides information for the public sector on emergency planning. Many of its publications are available online at
www.dhs.gov
or
www.ready.gov
.

EAS
refers to the Emergency Alert System. You have probably heard the beep-beep-beep sound on your television that signals an alert that then scrolls along the bottom of your television screen. This system can address the entire nation on very short notice about any grave threat or national emergency. Teach your children that if they hear the alert tones they are to tell you immediately.

FEMA
is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In addition to bearing the responsibility for disaster relief, this agency supplies the public with information on public safety. Information from FEMA is available at
www.fema.gov
. The Web site offers many helpful, free publications on preparedness.

NOAA
is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A NOAA weather station can provide up-to-theminute information on weather conditions. To receive this information, however, you must have a radio receiver that will pick up the NOAA signal; one of the first pieces of preparedness equipment you should purchase is a hand-crank NOAA weather radio receiver. Information from NOAA is available online at
www.noaa.gov
. Visiting the Web sites of the agencies named here will yield a wealth of preparedness information that can be ordered or downloaded. I would suggest investing in a file to hold all of this additional information. As you acquire new resources, you can add them to the file to become part of your preparedness library.

CHAPTER 10 LOSS OF POWER

The warnings of rolling brown- and blackouts and possible power grid failure have been with us for years. In 1998, former utility chief executive John Casazza predicted that the risk for blackouts would increase if plans for deregulation went ahead. We should have listened. On August 14, 2003, a blackout that covered most of the Northeast confirmed that he was correct.

Until the 1990s, utilities were tightly regulated monopolies. A single company controlled electricity distribution in a defined area. Each utility had enough capacity to meet the immediate needs of the customers in that geographical region. Long-distance energy shipments happened but were called upon only in an emergency. The very limited use of long-distance connections made the entire system more reliable.

In 1992, the Energy Policy Act was passed, deregulating the way power is distributed across the country. Deregulation changed power from an essential service to a commodity, like soybeans or pork bellies. Power is now traded increasingly over much longer distances, which has led to congestion that controllers did not expect and have trouble handling. I think of it rather like a tightrope walker. If a tightrope walker had to walk across a room on a wire stretched across the length, it’s likely she would be able to do so without much difficulty. If, however, the wire were suspended across a football field, it would be much more challenging, as the wire would become less stable the farther it were stretched. If lots of walkers were attempting to do the same thing at the same time, it would be harder still. That’s rather what has happened to our power grid. More traffic and greater distance leads to instability.

Since deregulation, the demand for electricity has continued to rise while the grid remains unchanged. Power lines that used to handle energy demands from a specific area are now expected to meet demands from across North America, but the grid has not been updated. Without some major changes, our grid is extremely vulnerable.

Avoiding a grid failure means ensuring that the amount of power traveling along a transmission line does not exceed the capacity of the line to handle it. If too much power flows on a line, excess heat is generated. This can actually cause the line to sag or break, which in turn results in power-supply instability and fluctuations in voltage. For complicated reasons of physics, longer power lines have less capacity than shorter lines.

A second layer of vulnerability comes from the necessity of human oversight to keep the grid up and running. If an event such as a flu pandemic were to sideline a large portion of our workforce at home and fear kept another portion from reporting to work, most of the grid would shut down within twenty-four hours. Nuclear-powered power plants are technically supposed to be able to run for upward of five hundred days without refueling, but other necessary maintenance would probably put the actual number of days before shutdown at closer to seven.

There will likely be no advance warning of impending grid failure beyond the rolling brownouts that are now a common summer occurrence in much of the country. In the event of a grid failure, all of your general preparedness strategies will be invaluable in helping you remain comfortable.

If you experience a blackout, it will be imperative to find out whether the source is an isolated event, such as a car accident taking out a power pole, or grid failure. The need for information and communication is the reason I put purchasing a hand-crank radio with a cell-phone charger at the top of my preparedness supply list.

An isolated event will be inconvenient; grid failure will be a longterm crisis. Banks will shut down. Grocery store shelves will empty overnight. Medical care will be difficult to access. You will be very glad to look in your storage space and see those rows of canned goods and that water purifier. Those less prepared will be sorry they didn’t heed the warnings.

WHAT TO DO WHEN THE POWER FAILS

•
Find out what’s happened.
If you have a cell phone, call your power company to alert them to the outage and find out what’s happened. If you have a battery-operated or hand cranked radio, tune in to local news radio; any widespread power outage is likely to be reported. If you can’t find out what’s happened, though, don’t panic; if you’ve followed the suggestions in this book, you’ll be prepared to get along for quite some time without power.

•
Prepare alternative lighting.
Get out your nonelectric lighting fixtures (see page 61). Even if it’s still light outside, you’ll want these on hand before darkness falls.

•
Unplug electrical equipment.
Turn off and unplug all appliances such as televisions, computers, and freezers, so that when power is restored, the surge won’t damage them. Leave one light turned on to alert you to when power is restored. Make a list of everything you turn off so you can remember to turn it all back on when power is restored.

Other steps will depend on your household’s state of preparedness. If it’s cold, you’ll probably want to start up a nonelectric heating appliance, if you have one, and you’ll want to look after your plumbing (see the following section for details). If it’s hot, you may want to distribute hand fans, damp cloths, and water to everyone in the house. If you have a generator, you may fire it up immediately to power your essential home systems, or you may decide to wait and see whether the power outage lasts.

“DO NOT OPEN”

In addition, if family members may not remember not to open the freezer and refrigerator, tape them shut. Post a sign on them: “Don’t open unless absolutely necessary!” Opening the freezer and refrigerator doors will dramatically raise the interior temperatures and hasten the thawing and warming of your food.

KEEPING PIPES FROM FREEZING

F YOU FIND
yourself in a cold house with no means to adequately heat it, it is imperative that you take steps to protect your plumbing pipes from freezing. These include not just the pipes that supply your sinks, toilets, and bathtubs, but also any hot-water-circulating heating pipes. When water in pipes freezes, it expands and will crack those pipes. You won’t know there’s a problem until the house warms up. When the pipes thaw, water will gush through those cracks and you will have a flood.

Water pipes are likely to survive without damage in a power outage that lasts only a few hours; your home won’t lose so much heat in that short time period when temperatures drop below freezing. And your pipes are likely to be fine if you have a nonelectric source of heat capable of heating the areas through which the pipes run. You might, for example, have a centrally located woodstove that sends some heat into your bathroom and kitchen; you could open the doors under sinks to expose the plumbing pipes to that heat. You might also have a furnace that keeps your basement, and therefore your water heater and supply pipes, above freezing.

If you have no heat, or if your pipes run through uninsulated spaces or exterior walls, you should open all faucets to a fast drip, because moving water will not have a chance to freeze.

If temperatures in the house drop below freezing, pour a small amount of any automobile antifreeze (about eight ounces; read the instructions on the antifreeze container label) into the toilet bowl to protect that water from freezing. Make sure to keep pets and children away from the toilet, as drinking that water would be fatal.

If the power outage is prolonged and temperatures remain below freezing, you may need to drain your plumbing system.

KNOW YOUR PLUMBING

If you don’t know how your plumbing works, you may find yourself frustrated in trying to drain your pipes during a power outage. It’s a good idea to look closely at your plumbing system now, before any power outage, and perhaps even to practice draining it, so that when you need to, you can do it with confidence. If you find there is no easy way to drain the entire system, talk to your plumber about other solutions, such as installing additional drains and shut-offs.

Using the manufacturer’s instructions for your appliances, and perhaps the guidance of a good plumber, go through your home and figure out where all your plumbing equipment, pipes, drains, and shut-off valves are. Label everything with tags, and assemble a tool kit with all the wrenches and other equipment you’ll need to drain the system. Keep the tool kit near your home’s main water supply shut-off valve.