I will say that in my case, things went fairly well over the weekend. We were prepared, for the most part, and really, our power wasn’t off too long, so we got off lucky.
But I did discover a few things. The biggest was, it’s all well and good to have a battery operated radio handy, but you probably should have one that works.
After the power went off Saturday morning, I was wandering around, bumping into things, mostly because we had no way of making coffee. That would be another note to myself. Keep instant coffee in the emergency kit. Or dig out that old percolator that is buried in the back of a cupboard somewhere and put that in there.
But I grabbed a battery radio and turned it on. Nothing. Found another and turned that on. Again nothing. I had four radios sitting around me, none of which would work. Most had batteries that had been left in there for ages and blown up. So my first job was to throw away old batteries and start scrubbing the terminals to get one to work. I finally managed to pull that off. So I did have a working radio. It just took me a while.
I also stumbled across something else. I have an oven. A portable oven. A propane powered portable oven. We got it a few years ago and have never tried it. It takes the little propane bottles, and I keep forgetting to pick one up, so the oven has been hiding in the basement for a while. I found it while I was looking for lamp oil.
Now I am determined to try it and figure out how to use it. Next time the power goes out I can make pizza. Or better yet, cookies.
But I did learn that while I thought I was prepared, I could use a bit more work on being actually prepared.