Steve Hiltner: The Hurricane Next Time

With each power outage, most spectacularly by the cain raised by two hurricanes in two years, we learn a little more about our house, and how incredibly vulnerable our domestic lifestyle is to disruption. Routine life literally hangs by a wire. Here are a few things we’re considering for future power outages:

 

Emergency Radio

We unfortunately ignored advice to get a battery-powered radio. A friend showed me an impressive-looking American Red Cross emergency radio, which has built-in LED flashlight, a solar panel and handcrank as backups to keep the radio and light going if the batteries run low, and several emergency weather channels in addition to regular AM/FM. The version I saw appears to be this FR360, but many different versions can be found on the internet. This Eton product supposedly gives 15 minutes of radio time for one minute of cranking, and can be used to recharge a cell phone.

Backup Lighting

My daughter loves bringing out the candles during a power outage. For a bit more light, word has it that the local Rite-Aid pharmacy sells very inexpensive oil lamps. Click to continue reading…

Planet Princeton contributor Steve Hiltner is the author of the blog Princetonprimer and several other blogs. He serves on the Princeton Environmental Commission.

One Comment

  1. Speaking of radio, we clung to 98.7 for the first day after the storm, where Channel 7 in NY was simulcasting on ESPN radio. They went back to sports Tuesday night, and we were stuck with 101.5, which is awful. Sad stories on talk radio and political jokes are not news!
    I’m still mad at George Bush for selling the bandwidth on which TV band radio aired. The idea that everything is digital now and nothing will ever go wrong is clearly absurd. I have put in a call to Rush Holt about this. We need to be able to find out what is happening. How can we convince TV stations to broadcast in some manner that can be received by cell phone or internet?

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