“Well, now that was fun,” said no one caught in the big storm that pounded Florida and parts of Georgia last week leaving a trail of devastation that will take months for some and, sadly, years for others to recover from.
How quickly your life can get back to normal from a natural disaster can come down to what you do before the event.
As The Wife and I scurried around last week buying this and doing that, it occurred to me what we were doing and what our parents used to do to get ready for a storm, were vastly different. Or is it? And yes, for this, we’re going to travel back to that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo.
It’s coming
Some things are as true today as they were during those seven years we grew up back on Flamingo. A call for snow will get most Georgians’ attention. Seeing a single snowflake falling from the sky, they start heading for the grocery store, but add a forecast of ice — well, that throws this entire town into a sheer panic.
The only thing that comes close to spurring such a reaction is tracking a hurricane for days and then finally realizing it will hit us in the next 24 hours and you’ve done nothing to get ready.
Food
The first thing my parents did before a big storm was to make sure the freezer and refrigerator were stocked with food. If there was anything left in the garden, Dad picked it while Mom took us all to the grocery store. She shopped for the essentials like milk, bread, eggs, cereal and canned goods. We kids also shopped for essentials like ice cream, cookies, and of course candy.
Water
After food, water was a must during a storm back on Flamingo. Mom had saved a month’s worth of milk jugs just so they could be filled with water days before a storm event hit. Sure, the water tasted strangely of milk, but at least it was drinkable.
She also filled our bathtub so we would have water to wash with and flush the toilet. We kids looked at the filled bathtub as an invitation to make boats, have water battles, and use the never-ending supply to fill our squirt guns.
Power
Be it from the collection of ice to the breaking point or strong winds thrashing and eventually ripping them loose from their poles, electrical lines don’t fare well in severe weather.
Dad cleaned out the garage and then filled the two cars with gas and parked them inside so both would be inside out of the weather. He also dusted off his old army lantern and made sure it was full of fuel.
Mom bought batteries for all the flashlights and lots of candles. Of course, burning candles for light isn’t something I’d recommend nowadays, but sixty years ago my parents thought it would be safer than five kids stumbling around in the dark.
Storm preparations haven’t changed much over the years
Days before the storm hit, The Wife and I did some of the very same things listed above in order to get ready.
We made sure our cars were filled and backed into the garage. We stocked up on some canned goods, bought gallons of drinking water, butter, bread, a gallon of milk and, yes, filled two bathtubs.
The Wife had also saved ten empty plastic gallon jugs previously filled with sweet tea. They were also filled with water. The water had a faint taste of tea, but that’s a whole lot better than the milk water back on Flamingo.
We bought special batteries that could charge our cell phones for a week. And, instead of new candles, I bought two rechargeable round flashlights guaranteed to illuminate even the largest room in the house. It’s a purchase I’d been trying to justify, and an impeding category 4 hurricane was a perfect justification.
A special note for any storm preparer: if you’ve plugged in your new, rechargeable, whole room flashlight and after 24 hours the green light still isn’t on, then open and remove battery. When you do, a small round plastic disk will fall out. The disk is supposed to be thrown away before plugging it in or the battery will not charge.
One last note: Last night I got up, didn’t cut on any lights, and walked into a wall. Perhaps Mom and Dad were right: candles were safer than having five kids running around the house in the dark.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories weekly in The Citizen since 2001.]
