Power Outages: Preparing For Storm Related Outages

Power Outages: every year millions of Americans experience them, yet most people are still surprisingly unprepared to deal with them. According to research out of Carnegie Mellon University, the average U.S. electrical utility customer will experience somewhere around 214 minutes of power outage each year. It’s estimated that these power outages cost the economy between $20 billion and $55 billion annually.

Are You Prepared for the coming Storm Season?

Every year I sit and watch in amazement as millions of Americans are caught off guard by something that is highly predictable, power outages caused by storms.

During 2011, the U.S. experienced 3,071 reported power outages that affected over 41.8 million people throughout the country. Although we don’t have current statistics on 2012, the number was likely much higher as we seen single storms like Hurricane Sandy and the Mid-Atlantic Storms, leave millions of Americans in the dark for weeks. In fact, during 2012 we saw a huge number of storms that left entire areas of our country without power for well over 72 hours.

It’s really not rocket science; at some point you are going to be affected by a power outage. Our power grid is old, deteriorating, and is not setup to handle even these normal seasonal storms. As our power grid ages, these types of events will increase in regularity and their effects will become longer as our country struggles to keep our antiquated grid, that’s still using 1960s and 70s technology, up and running.

How to Prepare for Power Outages

It’s estimated that somewhere around 90% of the public has little to no emergency preparedness supplies. Please don’t be one of those 90%, it doesn’t take long to prepare yourself to deal with these very predictable events.

The first thing you need to do is take an inventory of your current supplies. Calculate how long you can realistically survive with what you currently have; if you’re not satisfied with the outcome of your inventory assessment, now is the time to take action.

WATER: One of the most critical emergency preparedness supplies that you can have is water; it’s the first thing you should focus on.

During a power grid failure, especially those caused by seasonal storms, there’s a good chance that your area might be affected by a boil water notice. This happens when local water treatment facilities can no longer guarantee the safety of your water due to storm related issues.

To ensure your family has enough water to make it through a disaster, you need to consider stocking 1 gallon of water per day, per person. I recommend having at least a 1- 2 week supply of water on hand at all times.

You should also look into buying a good emergency water filter, and buying something like the Waterbob, which will allow you transform your bathtub into an emergency water reservoir the moment you lose power.

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