Hunkered Down

Image via WikipediaI have made just about all of the preparations that I can in anticipation of Hurricane Irene coming up the coast and into the Maryland area.  We have all of our necessary medications on hand.  We had bought some bottled water left from our trip to OC, and I bought another case to be safe.  I went to the grocery store each of the past two days to buy various non-perishable food stuffs.

My biggest concern is having the power go out for an extended period of time.  When Hurricane Isabel came through in 2003, we lost power for three days.  It was particularly tough on our son because he could not understand why he could not use all of his various electronic devices.  He thought he was being punished and it was difficult to assure him that he had done nothing wrong.

It was also difficult in dealing with some other frayed nerves because of the length of time it took to get power back on.  We are used to only having outages for a few hours at most, and not used to the widespread devastation that took place during that weather event.  I am hopeful that we will not lose power for very long.

The other problem with losing power is the loss of perishable food items.  I have taken steps to alleviate that issue should we lose power.  At one point in my life, I worked for a dry ice company selling a dry ice program to retail stores.  Yesterday, I visited one of those stores and saw that they were already low on dry ice.  I picked up what I could, and a little bit more this morning.

All of our devices have been fully charged, and we have car chargers at the ready should we need to recharge them.  The one last thing I picked up this morning to try to alleviate stress for my son was a power inverter.  It is a charger that plugs into your cigarette lighter, but also has an outlet so you can charge non-USB devices into it like you would your regular wall outlet.  This way, we can recharge his game system and portable DVD player.

All of our cars have been fully gassed up.  I stopped by one station to top off this morning, and they were out of regular gasoline.  The one last thing that concerns me is working tonight.  I am supposed to deliver pizza.  I am not sure what their plans are as the weather deteriorates. In the past, during inclement weather they have threatened to fire people who did not show up for work.  All of the drivers I talked to last night were concerned about their safety.

I don't intend to do anything that will unnecessarily put my life in jeopardy.  If conditions aren't too bad when it comes time to go to work, I will probably head out.  However, if things deteriorate rapidly, I will not hesitate to call it a night.  Hopefully, management will put safety over profit.  I should note it is not the store management at issue, but the franchise owners.  I hope that everybody in the path of Irene stays safe and sound.
 

Related articles

• Hurricane Irene's Power Is Less, Scope Is Wide (npr.org)
• Hunkering Down For The Hurricane (thebackyardgarden.wordpress.com)
• Food Safety Tips - Hurricane Irene (circleoffood.com)