Update from Alabama

[bcauz3y]

Glad you are safe. Fellow in my work building lost his sister and her husband in Alabama, leaving 3 kids orphaned.

This has been a horrible month for tornadoes.

Our daughter and her husband (in Arkansas) were bracketed north and south by tornadoes, I watched the radar tracks with horror. They are in a leased place that has no storm cellar, so daughter put together BOBs for them and had a "safe location" to head to if it got bad over them. Good plan, but I want to send them money to dig a bloody root cellar!

Our family spent the night in our shelter, which is built into the basement. We were lucky.

Prayers sent to your co-worker.

[bcauz3y]

regards to a 250 gallon tank between house and waterline.. you would need a pump as you won't be getting city water pressure

It was a good eye opener though huh

If the tank is above the highest water outlet (shower heads) won't that create enough pressure?

Also, while the water is still flowing from the water company, I assume the pressure would pass through the tank as long as it's full.

[Skyowl's Wife]

Glad you are safe. Fellow in my work building lost his sister and her husband in Alabama, leaving 3 kids orphaned.

This has been a horrible month for tornadoes.

Our daughter and her husband (in Arkansas) were bracketed north and south by tornadoes, I watched the radar tracks with horror. They are in a leased place that has no storm cellar, so daughter put together BOBs for them and had a "safe location" to head to if it got bad over them. Good plan, but I want to send them money to dig a bloody root cellar!

[Diesel]

regards to a 250 gallon tank between house and waterline.. you would need a pump as you won't be getting city water pressure

It was a good eye opener though huh

[maric]

Sorry things have been rough for you all. I think its really great, you helping others. It was your time, and money, and you did a good thing. Good luck on all your future plans. You were more fortunated, and yet, you learned a lot about what took place. Life lessons can make us or break us- right! We also, need to do a TON more with filtering water. Its the most important thing, and we focus more in other directions. Thats not smart of us... thanks for the reminder! Again, good luck!

[bcauz3y]

Update:

I took yesterday off of work, and bought bottled water and work gloves. I keep 100 gallons of gas in an auxiliary tank on my truck and a few 5 gallon gas cans. I pulled up to the fire dept. and filled up every city truck, every police car, and every other gas burning vehicle the city had. I also had 10 gallons of pre mixed 2 cycle oil, and filled up their chain saws.

It was all I could do, but I think it helped. There was no gas within 25 miles of my city.



I also wanted to take a few moments to pass on some lessons learned from this.

Keeping in mind, that we just moved into our new house about a month ago, we
hadn't had time to get a lot of our resources in place.

1. Our new place has an electric stove and electric hot water heaters. While I still love our electric appliances, not having an alternative heat source to boil water really sucks. I hadn't moved my gas grill from the old house yet, so we had to rush out and buy one.

Our new plan is for me to build a set of burners for cooking with iron skillets and pots. I will build this out of angle iron, and a few basic grill parts from the supply store. You may ask why I'm not just getting a grill. Because I don't need to drop food on a grill, I want to be able to cook meals with iron cookware.

I will also be getting a wood burning stove, but that is later down the road.

2. Even though we didn't lose water, a lot of people did. Have you considered what you'd do if you didn't have water? I mean, if you are lucky, like I am, we have a nice creek running about 1/8th of a mile from our house, but we didn't have sufficient filtering and water jugs to handle it.

My new plan is a three prong approach:

* Buy water jerry cans (about 10 of them)
* Install a 250 gallon tank between the water company and my house to serve as a reserve. The key is to install it so that the water is constantly being refreshed so it won't go bad.
* Install 55 gallon rain drums at 3 of my downpipes coming from the gutters

I will also be investing in MORE filtering. We did have some, but not nearly enough.

More to come.