How to Prepare for Winter Power Outages
- 1). Don't wait until winter to go shopping for the supplies you'll need during an ice storm. Stock up and prepare for a winter storm in the off-season. If you wait until the meteorologist's dire forecast in the days before a storm, you'll find yourself scrambling for ever-diminishing goods on store shelves. If you have a fireplace, stock up on cord wood. Also stock up on wool blankets, down comforters and layers of clothing. Have plenty of batteries of all types for flashlights and radios.
- 2). Keep flashlights in the same place at all times so you know where they are when the power goes out. Use the bigger lantern-type flashlights for power outages. They can light up a whole room and make life a lot easier during your time of inconvenience. Don't use candles, any type of fuel or open flame for a light source inside. This creates a major safety hazard, especially when you fall asleep.
- 3). Keep a large cooler and blocks of blue ice on hand. Blue ice is a plastic-sealed container of coolant used in coolers for camping trips and can be found at any outdoors/sporting goods store. Freeze and store the blue ice in your freezer. When the power goes out put the blocks in the cooler along with all of your perishable food items. A few blocks of blue ice in a cooler should keep your perishables cold for a couple of days. Of course, since it is winter, you could also keep your perishables outside, but this depends on what the actual temperature is during the daylight hours and whether there is snow and ice to place them in.
- 4). Buy a UPS device. A UPS is an uninteruptible power supply that you plug into an AC outlet in your home to protect your computer and other electronic devices during normal times. When the power goes out, a UPS device will continue to be a source of power for cell phone chargers and laptops, which can keep you connected to loved ones in your time of need. A UPS device is essentially a big battery that you can plug into. Like all batteries, it will run down over time.
- 5). Get a land line phone connection. When power outages occur, it doesn't mean phone lines are down too. More often than not, a wired phone connection will remain intact during a power outage, as they are two separate lines of connection.
