Preparing for Irma

We aren’t exactly what I would call in the ‘danger zone’. She could be hitting us though as a category 1 hurricane (rough estimate). Honestly, there is a ton of back and forth and weather services can’t seem to agree on exactly how bad it will be for our area. Regardless, we will be preparing for the worst. For us this would be multiple days without power. Since we do not live near a coast we will not experience the storm surge or flash flooding other areas will. If you’ve been following along for a while you know we intend to get into prepping at some point. Right now money and other endeavors have kept that from happening so we need to make do with what we currently have.

The first step was water. Wednesday I started filtering our well water using our zero water filter and putting it into any containers I have. This included some extra canning jars, Rubbermaid bins and water bottles. My husband borrowed 4-5 gallon water coolers from his work as well. When it’s all said and done we should have over 30 gallons of filtered drinking water for us and our pets! I also put aside 10 gallons for the ducks. Muscovies don’t need pools so a chicken waterer will be fine for a few days which should mean those 10 gallons will be enough. We will also be filling a bathtub and one kitchen sink for washing water and have a 5 gallon bucket in the bathroom so that we can flush the toilet at least for a little while.

(This is some of the water we have saved up. There is one more cooler and many smaller containers)

Once I knew we had enough drinking water I started filling up any empty pyrex containers (also with filtered water) and stuffed those in the freezer. This will help it act like a cooler if the power goes out and bonus we get more drinking water as it melts.

Second step food! This one was a bit harder because we couldn’t go out and buy a bunch of nonperishables. We adjusted next week’s meal plan (we go shopping every Saturday) for nonperishable items instead and plan to cook anything that will go bad first if the power goes out. We keep very little extra food on hand and even less of it is perishable so we should be able to eat it rather quickly and it won’t need to be kept cold after cooking. We have a charcoal grill that we use with wood and dry wood in the shed. We also went and bought bags of dog and cat food because we were likely to run out right just before storm hit. We did all of this on Wednesday even though the storm isn’t supposed to hit until tomorrow morning (Monday). This ended up being perfect because the stores were getting cleared out of supplies already. We almost weren’t able to buy the nonperishables we needed because people were already freaking out and clearing the shelves.

After that I spent some time preparing the yard. When we were stationed in Japan I collected Glass Fishing Floats and brought quite a few back to the states. Most of the really large ones are in the yard as decorations. I moved those into covered areas to prevent them getting destroyed by a fallen branch and stored anything that could get carried off by the wind.

(Aren't they cool?! This was spring 2016 after many days of rain)

As far as supplies go we don’t have much. Some candles and a lighter and a measly first aid kit. This should be fine though since we aren’t getting hit until it’s much weaker. Mostly I’m trying to make sure I keep the laundry empty and the dishes clean to minimize our need for water should the power go out for a long period of time. We don’t currently have any working flashlights so we charged up our ipods and old Japanese phones so we can use the flashlight apps.

There are not any evacuation recommendations for our area and we do not expect any flooding. However, we are under a hurricane warning, a river flood warning and a flash flood watch. We do not expect any flooding to endanger our home. All in all I think we did pretty well considering the only supplies we could buy were food stuffs. Is it ideal? No. Would I recommend it? Nope. If you have the money to be fully prepared for a natural disaster do so. If not you can make do with what you have and feel fairly confident that you will be able to tackle the situation. We’ll try to keep you updated and stay safe guys!

(All the ducks eagerly awaiting the oncoming apocalypse)