On Feb 25, 12:44 pm, Jonathan Grobe wrote:
We just had a ice storm and I had no electricity for 22 hours. I
was mostly unprepared and didn't like the experience at all.

What are you doing to prepare for this?

If you are having ice storms, your first necessity is heat. I have a
few cords of dry firewood in a woodshed, and a 30-year-old Fisher
Mamma Bear. It heats the whole house nicely. There are several other
options for heat, like portable kerosene heaters, or a generator wired
up to run a furnace. Obviously, electric heat is not a good idea
during a power outage.

Your second need (some would say first) is water. Without water, your
toilet won't work. Basic sanitation is a necessity of life. If you
are on a municipal water system, you are in pretty good shape, except
in cases of earthquake. I am rural and get water from a well that
isn't reliable in the summer, so I set up a 2500 gallon cistern to
store whatever water is available. The bottom of the cistern is level
with the window sills, so during power outages it provides gravity
flow to fill the toilets. If we want a shower, we have to fire off a
generator to run the pump.

Another critical need is a survival kit. 30 days of any medication.
Gloves. Emergency ponchos and space blankets. Emergency flares and
fire lighters. Water purification tablets. Keep it in your car.
There's no guarantee that you will be able to get home immediately.
Be ready to take care of yourself wherever you are.

For food, just stock a pantry with dried and canned foods. A camp
stove will do all the cooking you need. I have a travel trailer and a
camp kitchen with a propane barbecue and 2-burner propane hot plate.
During the last big outage, I never used them. We just cooked on top
of the wood stove. Pot roast. Yum. Coffee. Pancakes. Chili.
Stew. Sloppy Joes. A manual drip coffee maker and a hand coffee
grinder are very nice. I bought the coffee grinder after being
reduced to smashing coffee beans with a claw hammer one icy morning.
As a backup, learn to make cowboy coffee.

Light is handy, particularly for winter outages. If you have pets,
locate any flames where the pets can't knock a lamp or candle over and
burn your house down. I have candle sconces and wall mount kerosene
lamps to provide light, all of which hang 6' off the floor, well above
the height of wagging doggy tails. For a porch light, I hang a
kerosene storm lantern by the front door. It's cheery.

Aladdin lamps are bright, but they burn HOT! They can't be near a
ceiling, or they will set the ceiling on fire. Around animals, they
can't be left unattended. Fluorescent lanterns put out a lot of
light, and can be found that run off of D cells.

One of my favorite lights is an LED clip-on book light, that provides
plenty of light for reading. It provides about 300 hours of light
from a couple AA batteries.

Generators are handy things. They make electricity when the delivery
guy doesn't show up. I think most people over-do the generator
thing. I don't even bother to get a generator out until the second
day of an outage. I have one generator big enough to run the electric
water heater or the well pump, but not both at once. I heat a tank of
water, turn the tank off and the pump on, and take a shower. A shower
is luxury. It sure beats a sponge bath. The big generator eats a
gallon and a quarter of gas an hour. For general electrical power, I
have a little 2-cycle 1200 watt generator that will run 4.5 hours on a
gallon of fuel. 1200 watts is plenty to run the fridge and freezer,
some lights, a computer or TV set. It's also so quiet that it doesn't
irritate me or my neighbors. I think it cost $149.

Most of the time, I just hark back to the 19th century and do without
electricity. A couple hours of electricity a day is plenty to keep
the freezer frozen and take showers. The rest of the time, my house
is snug and warm without electricity.

Other things that are handy:

A NOAA weather radio.
A GOOD battery powered radio. I have a Realistic DX-440 that is
super.
A battery powered travel alarm clock.
Battery powered carbon monoxide and smoke detectors.
Batteries. Alkaline batteries have a shelf life measured in years, so
stock up.
Lots of candles. I keep 40 or 50 on a shelf in the garage.
Lamp oil. I keep a gallon of the scentless paraffin oil handy, and
can substitute another gallon of kerosene if things get tough.
A hard wired telephone extension or two. I have a couple princess
phones that I plug in at opposite ends of the house.
A gasket kit for the generator, if you know how to repair small
engines.
Several good books you haven't read.