Thursday, July 10, 2014

Do you know what to do if the power goes out?

Well, I will tell you what we do living here in Florida now for nearly twenty-eight years as of the 19th of next month...
I call Florida Power & Light, their number is cute, 1-800-4-OUTAGE, and simple to remember and they check remotely if the problem is only us or more customers are experiencing the outage too. This takes all of forty seconds, amazing! Yesterday's power outage was in our neighborhood and consisting of two hundred and forty-five customers that we were told that we were not alone. Oh, I almost forgot they call you back with updates!
This all has to be done from either your cell phone or your old fashioned non-wireless phones and they do have caller I.D. and can access your location that way. (Wireless phones don't work in power failures, and in bad hurricane or tornado related storms most cell towers are blown down and those don't work either. Our old fashioned telephone was our only access to call anyone and for them to call us when we had that direct hit from Hurricane Charley 2004, a CAT 4.)
Just a heads up for any of you who have been lucky enough not to have to know any of this, due to not having any extreme weather in your neighborhood!
Experience is the best teacher in some cases, and living here all these years we have had too numerous to count power outages, oh make  sure your home has surge protectors built in or like our older home we have power strip surge protectors for all of our electronics. I do understand the whole house surge protectors can be installed post building; I think I saw a commercial for them.
Although, yesterday I had a load of whites soaking for thirty minutes in the washing machine and the timer I set was on the microwave above our oven stove, in other words built in. The storm hit when the time went off and I went to tap it off and oddly enough I got zapped! Yes, we have ceramic tile floors in there, not carpeting, and yes that was an electric zapping! Consequently that load soaked for an hour and forty minutes more without power! Ha! Crazy that whites that say to no longer bleach them; what's with that? So they did survive.

The first outage was in the earlier part of the day and the weather, a severe thunderstorm had dropped the outside temps to the low seventies from the nineties, but we still don't open the windows here or that matter most rainy areas shouldn't either, since the humidity of course is out of sight!
Instead we keep  our cool in, our air did maintain the cool in here for that time and it was light enough at noon-ish to one forty to read our choice magazines. My laptop worked but needed more recharging and since the internet goes out too in a power failure, our back up magazines were nice to read and examine more thoroughly. We get only four, for only forty bucks a year, Coastal Living, Southern Living, Better Homes and Gardens and This Old House.

We keep flashlights all over the  house and check them periodically to make sure they work.
We do have a battery radio/TV/lights combo thingy that we got years ago, but the TV doesn't work anymore due to HDTV, but the radio and lights on either end do, it is a battery and hand crank sort of thing. (PS they have come out with HDTV battery TV's; get them before an emergency happens or they will be all gone!)
I have a cooling vest for leaving the house, since I am severely heat sensitive due to the Multiple sclerosis, and so when we had our second power failure in one day, but this one at 6:10 P.M. and the sun was shinning and the temperature had gone back up to nearly ninety and lasted till just before sunset at 8:20 ish P.M. Hubby and I played a few hands of Rummikub and I began to feel very warm, my body temperature even goes up and so I had to put my cooling vest on inside! And just when we were starting to use our battery lights the power went back on! (I have to wear my cooling vest at the gym, it is also necessary there too.) 

If you have young children remember to have old-school type games and toys and coloring books etc,  for entertaining and don't forget cool drinks, just open and close the fridge and freezer quickly they will stay cold for at least five hours or more and if they don't we have two gasoline guzzling generators to start up the power for me with the central air on the one alone, and the other for everything else! Save receipts; most insurance companies will reimburse you, if not and it is a BIG storm, FEMA will.

Any questions?
There is probably more I forgot, but this just covered power outages, always evacuate when told to; batten down the house, here we have shutters, and put yard furniture and other possible flying objects in the garage or shed and leave when told you have to and make arrangements well in advance for you to take all pets, and special needs too should be thought of like mine... GOOD LUCK AND BE SAFE and please check in and let us know how you are doing?
Don't take unnecessary chances!

Enough said.

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