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PreparationTips

Preparation

Louis' tips not normally seen in other disaster preparation sites:

Do not wait until too late for hurricanes. Make a plan for a hurrication and go somewhere and have fun. Beat the crowds. Do not worry until you can do something about it. Visit Austin, San Angelo, Dallas, Marfa if you can get there before there is bad weather!

There is a balance between concern and panic. The rise in blood pressure, and focus helps in some ways until you really get panicked. It is much better to learn to remain calm. Leaving early is much easier on you, there is less traffic, gas, and traffic jams are less likely. For me, the most important lesson has been conveyed by a single word, Hurrication. Once you leave your house forget about it, have fun! Eat good food, go to the movies, hike, see friends, whatever. Get enough sleep though, you may need it. Vacation/hurrication/chill out!

Prep for power outages and hurricanes

• You have to prep these when there is not a problem.

Take soda bottles and put 1/2 to 1 cup salt per gallon of water in them. For freezers that freeze below -5˚F or -20˚C use the higher amount, otherwise the lower. Fill them only 3/4 full. Put them in your freezer. Spread them out, but the door and the top. Because of the salt these bottles will melt first keeping your food frozen. The large amount of salt hopefully ensures that enough of the liquid will remain slushy that the bottle never bursts. This has helped our food weather long periods of no electricty.

Freezes

• How to keep a toilet trickling. This tip has been lauded by a water system manager. Take a piece of thin string tie it outside of your toilet tank to something secure and then allow a the end of it to go over the rim of the tank and down 6 inches past the flap valve. This will cause the flap valve to not seal completely and cause your tank to trickle. It might damage your flap valve but they are cheap and can be replaced by homeowners. Only remove them while the flushing flap is up to reduce the chance of damage. It is much cheaper to replace the flap valve than to fix pipes broken by frozen water. It will also keep your toilet running. The thickness of the string controls the amount of water. We use something like kite string when it is only under a few degrees.

Generators The first time you really need your generator and you have it and it works you will feel really good. During a freeze in Texas our house got down to about 10˚C. The night before I got the generator going but it would not run the controls on our gas furnace. In the morning I started the generator up again and plugged in the fridge, freezer and some lights. I plugged the furnace in last. I think that the other loads stabilized the generator output enough that the furnace saw reasonable power.

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