This has been quite a week... first the earthquake breaking up a work day that was already plenty full of rumblings without a fussy fault line, and now Irene is coming by today, and I need to get ready. She's a pretty demanding visitor; the kind that doesn't just smudge up your guest towels - she's likely to fling all your deck furniture over the edge and crack a few of your windows if she's got a mind to. Like most East Coasters, I scoff at hurricane warnings, because the actual storms are never as bad as they are purported to be. But this one made me a little more nervous once I heard that the mayor of Ocean City, MD shut down the liquor so that they could actually evacuate people. (I guess you can't get some folks' attention in a crisis if there's a scotch or a stein in the way.) FEMA suggested some items to have in a home hurricane supply kit, and since I saw this list late last night and the storm's supposed to hit in a few hours, I'm doing triage to see whether I have the right supplies on hand:
- water (one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days) CHECK
- nonperishable food (at least a three-day supply) CHECK, if you count 2 cans of black beans, 1 can of almond pastry filling, 1 bag of brown rice and a box of Grape Nuts cereal.
- flashlight CHECK
- extra batteries Uh-oh
- first aid kit Do Hello Kitty bandaids do the trick?
- battery-powered or hand-crank radio Yikes!
- wrench or pliers to turn off utilities I call points for knowing I have them even if I don't know where they are.
- can opener CHECK, as long as the electricity is still on (well, really...FEMA didn't specify non-electric!)
- local maps Of course... for those intimate neighborhood walks when the wind whips the shoes right off your feet.
- cell phone with chargers, inverter or solar charger WTF - solar charger?
Clearly, I have to make some tracks here to FEMA-tize my bunker for the storm. I wonder if CVS keeps the solar chargers next to the hand-crank radios?
© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie
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