Once upon a time I believed the world would always be normal, life would go on as usual and nothing bad would happen to me or my family. This is a story about how two hurricanes taught me to abandon this thinking in favor of being wise. I survived a natural disaster by feeding my child everything left in my pantry. I did not plan ahead. Learn from my mistake about what went oh-so-wrong.
I Want to Tell You a Story
This is a story about an unprepared young mother with an 18 month-old in diapers enduring TWELVE DAYS without electricity in their home after Hurricane Ike ransacked Houston in September of 2008. And yes, that unprepared mother was me.
12 Days Without Electricity
Hurricane Ike made landfall as a category 2 storm (110 mph winds) and knocked out the power almost immediately. We had no way of knowing that we would be without power for twelve long, hot, sticky days. I hadn’t even planned to be without power for 24 hours. I was completely unprepared. I was worse than unprepared; I was naïve, unobservant and had been spoiled into complacency by normal functioning modern life.
What Went Okay
I was lucky enough to have recently bought a bulk box of diapers and refilled the two propane tanks for the grill. We had a case and a half of bottled water on-hand and around ten rolls of toilet paper by sheer dumb luck. My husband owned a lantern, a headlamp and two flashlights among his camping equipment. We had a single pack of 8 AA batteries in the house to power the flashlights. I had two scented jar candles that were nearly full and a half-full box of matches. We had a gas can three-quarters full of gas for the lawnmower. This is the end of the list of fortunate happenstances that helped us.
What Went Wrong
The short answer is that almost everything went wrong. Without electricity and air conditioning, our house climbed to a sweltering ninety degrees inside. We were at greater risk of heat exhaustion being inside the house than in the shade outside. We opened our garage bay door and lived in the garage during the day where an occasional hot breeze kept us from succumbing to the heat. Every window and door in the house had to be opened to keep the hot air moving if we hoped to be able to sleep inside in our beds. Unfortunately having every window open for twelve days led to enormous amounts of fine outside dirt and particles being blown in, even through the screens. It dusted every horizontal surface: counter tops, tables, door frames, and bed covers. The house felt gritty and dirty no matter how much I swept.
Food Became an Issue
The food in the thawing freezer was grilled and eaten first. The grill was our only cooking source since the electricity and natural gas were out. Grocery stores were damaged by the hurricane and some stores had experienced flooding by rain water being forcefully blown into the store through broken glass windows. Delivery trucks could not make it into town until the thousands of toppled trees and downed power lines were removed from the roads. It was six days after the storm before a grocery store opened. Another two weeks passed before the stores were fully re-stocked after the panicked buying ahead of the storm. The morning the stores opened I had almost nothing left in my pantry except for a can of baked beans, which I heated up and fed my son for breakfast. To this day he will still eat baked beans for breakfast; a humorous reminder of how unprepared I once was.
I Didn’t Know About Panic Buying
The day before landfall, my husband came home from work and told me there was a hurricane coming. I didn’t watch the news and wouldn’t own my first smart phone for two more years so I had no idea a hurricane had formed. By the time I saw the Doppler images of Ike on the ten o’clock news, the stores were empty but I was unaware of that fact, too, because I had never witnessed panicked buying before a storm. I had absolutely no clue how much damage hurricanes caused and how humans behaved before one made landfall.
Things Went Wrong Quickly
The first electricity-less night we lit the candles in the kitchen and used the flashlights to navigate around the house. My curious 18 month-old was fascinated by the candle and the moment his preoccupied parent’s backs were turned, he leapt onto the kitchen table and grabbed the flame. The burn wasn’t bad but without electricity, there was no ice in the freezer, no cold ice packs and my tube of Neosporin was flat and empty. I ran his hand under lukewarm tap water and glanced at the magnetized pad of paper on the fridge that contained the list of items I needed from the store. At the top of the list was the Neosporin, followed by infant’s Tylenol. I gave my son the last few drops I could coax from the bottle to help with the burn pain. Over the next week the grocery list began to haunt me, as it seemed to foretell my doom based on what we had run out of and not replenished before the storm.
Life Can Get Dangerous Without Dish Soap
The third item on the list was dish soap and I was running dangerously low. I rationed it as best I could but it ran out before grocery stores re-opened. We switched to the small amount of leftover paper party plates and disposable cutlery I had in the cabinet, which also ran out quickly. Under the bathroom sink was a nearly full bottle of rubbing alcohol which I used to disinfect cooking utensils in an attempt to prevent illness and food poisoning. It worked and thus began my tendency to use rubbing alcohol as a disinfectant from that day onward.
The Laundry Piled Up
No electricity meant the washing machine sat idle. I washed the bare necessities by hand and line dried them on hangers arranged along the shower curtain rod in the hall bathroom. At least the tap water was still running and the boil ban had been lifted. The oppressive humidity made line drying almost impossible and cotton clothing never fully dried. I wondered why I was changing my son’s dirty clothes three times per day and finally let him run around in his diaper, which helped him stay cool. Still, the laundry pile grew.
A Baby on the Go
Every door to our house was open, I was trying to keep our son in the shade of the garage and all he wanted was to rush into the street. I raced to catch him at the end of our driveway numerous times before he darted headlong into the path of a passing vehicle. My nerves were frazzled by day six when I handed him a toy shovel and let him spend hours digging up as much of the front flower beds as his heart desired. Our covered front porch shaded his skin from sunburn and he was sitting still, which was all I could ask for. When he tired of the shovel, I gave him a large paintbrush with a tub of water and showed him how to “paint” the concrete. He enjoyed this for a few moments until he spilled water on the soil he had dug up and discovered mud, which kept him occupied while I cooked dinner on the grill in the driveway. When my husband arrived home from work, he thought our property had been ravaged by wild animals. I informed him I’d let our toddler do some re-landscaping and that we could fix it later. The digging in the front beds and mud play kept our son safely out of the road until the power came back on the night of day twelve. The bushes later thrived after all the aeration. (And maybe a little bit of peeing.)
How Hurricane Ike Changed Me
After Ike, I was much more open to the idea of planning ahead and keeping some supplies on-hand. Once I learned that Houston averaged one hurricane affect every ten years, I took steps to prepare for the next one. Never again would I allow my family to suffer through a natural disaster unprepared.
And Then Came Harvey
When Hurricane Harvey popped up out of nowhere one balmy day in August 2017, I was ready for him. I had learned my lesson well nine years before. In that time I had grown interested in homesteading and maintained a well-stocked pantry. I had also experienced a couple hurricane scares that we avoided so I was well-rehearsed on how to navigate last minute preparations among frenzied drivers and panicked shoppers.
7 Hours
Between my husband’s text that notified me of the developing storm at 12:34 pm and when he went to grab more Dr. Pepper that evening only to discover the Wal-Mart had fully bare shelves, only 7 hours and 6 minutes had passed. Had I not already had most of the items we needed on-hand, I would have broken the promise I made to myself to not allow my family to endure a natural disaster unprepared again.
What I Learned from Hurricane Harvey
I still made mistakes. First, I was not good about rotating the food in my pantry so when the ketchup ran out and I grabbed the next bottle, it was a dark maroon color and past the best by date. I had only ever replaced the bottle in front as opposed to rotating the back bottle forward. This was avoidable laziness. (I also learned how to make ketchup from scratch after this!) Second, I underestimated how many eggs and sticks of butter I would need if we were cooped up inside and making comfort foods to offset the cabin fever.
Eggs Became Precious
We kept power all the way through Harvey, which I was grateful for, because it allowed me to bake. I went through 3 dozen eggs in ten days to help feed first responders and stores remained sold out of eggs for another week after this. (A few lucky individuals were able to get one carton of eggs if they began standing in line around 4 am and the store happened to receive a truck carrying eggs that morning.) After such an experience I was even more determined to one day own chickens. I ended up buying eggs from a friend who had property 30 minutes away and a flock of laying hens. Her phone was ringing constantly with people wanting to buy eggs. Although 15 eggs were laid per day, it was nowhere close to enough to supply all her friends, family members and neighbors.
What Else Were Stores Sold Out Of?
Eggs were always sold out and often butter was, too. Milk might be available one or two days per week and the bread aisle was bare shelves with extremely scant options that children were unlikely to eat. PopTarts, granola bars and beef jerky were all sold out but snack cakes were still available. The bottled water aisle looked like it had been ransacked by bears with plastic wrappings and wooden pallets left where frustrated shoppers had last kicked them out of the way. The candy aisle and the baking aisle looked almost normal. There was still canned tuna and several canned vegetables available but Macaroni & Cheese and all the popular boxed dinners were sold out. Toilet paper, paper towels and Kleenex were completely gone and did not restock for at least a week. Neighbors went to nearby houses to ask for rolls of toilet paper if they ran out.
Gas and Grocery Shortages Spread Across the State
Seven hours away my sister-in-law reported that their grocery stores were limiting purchases on some items while having no bottled water for sale because everything was being re-routed to Houston. Gas stations were selling out of gas all over the state as people realized oil refineries would be shut down until the record-setting twenty trillion gallons of hurricane rain water receded.
ATMs Ran out of Cash
It did not take long for ATMs to run out of cash ahead of the storm as people prepared to be without access to digital funds should there be power outages. It took a number of days for cash to be put back into the ATMs.
What Was It Like?
Living through Hurricane Harvey was nerve rattling. When the few remaining undamaged stores first re-opened, the lines were 1 to 3 hours long. We had lost several stores to flood waters, including our local Costco. The neighborhood grocery stores that did not flood were cautious and would only let ten to twenty people inside at a time because the masses were still acting panicky. It was not entirely safe to have your children out and about since there was occasional looting happening. People were still a tad aggressive and grabby with food even a week after the storm, which my son witnessed when we stopped at a grocery super store that had finally reopened. We could hear the constant thrum of rescue helicopters swooping over the store as they airlifted the injured out of the city and the lights would occasionally flicker as we shopped for whatever was left.
We Have Lost the Art of Baking
I realized during Hurricane Harvey that our society has lost the art of baking from scratch. The still-stocked baking aisle was the first clue that it was true. I baked pans of cinnamon rolls for two neighbor families, which seemed to shock the recipients. Some area churches that had opened to shelter flood victims were asking for soup and homemade bread to be donated to feed everyone that evening. They had plenty of soup brought but very few knew how to make bread or had the yeast on-hand to do it. I remember gathering with friends to share what we had witnessed and several bemoaned not knowing how to bake a loaf of bread when their families desperately needed it.
We Have Lost the Art of Being Prepared
In our fast paced, distracted world we are getting too busy to remember to plan ahead for the events we cannot control. I’d like to help my readers be prepared if you, too, must face the horrors of a hurricane, bomb cyclone, blizzard or other concerning storm threatening to strike. Below is a printable list of items to organize ahead of a storm. They are tasks that you could accomplish any given week….except for the week that a disaster strikes and the stores are sold out.
Download Our Printable List of Clever Plan-Ahead Tasks Here!
What Living Through 2 Hurricanes Taught Me
I know what empty grocery store shelves look and feel like. I have felt my son nervously cling to my purse strap because the adults around him are behaving in a panicked way that is unsettling. I’ve fed neighbor children who showed up and quietly confessed their pantry was nearly empty. I have twice lived through the horrors of a natural disaster, once as an unprepared mother and once attempting to help as many others as I could by sharing what I had. The latter is much more preferable and I hope I have encouraged you by sharing what two hurricanes have taught me. Before natural disasters strike, know how to plan ahead!
All my love,
Tay
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