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We're so helpless these daysFollow

#1 Dec 23 2013 at 10:51 AM Rating: Good
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So here in southern Ontario we've had the worst ice storm I've ever seen. Thousands without power, myself included.

I've been up all night keeping the wood fireplace going to keep the living room warm enough for the kids to sleep in. I have a lung infection and the wife and 6 year old are sick. It's been fun...Ran out of wood at 7 am and had to go hunt some down, which again, was fun given everyone bought it out, along with the road salt, everywhere. Managed to find some compressed logs at a lumber yard and bought all they had and some bags of offcut. Even finding candles, non-scented, for lighting was a chore.

Now, if it was just me none of this would be an issue, I'm fairly rugged and know how to keep warm, survive etc, but it's different for the kids, and certainly for other families who aren't lucky enough to have a wood fireplace to take some of the bite out or don't know how to handle these situations.

Are we too reliant on technology these days? Should we be doing a better job of teaching our children low tech survival skills?
#2 Dec 23 2013 at 11:19 AM Rating: Decent
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Go to a fucking hotel, you don't have to be Les Stroud for your kids.
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#3 Dec 23 2013 at 11:24 AM Rating: Good
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We can't all afford to "Go to a fucking hotel" every time a storm hits at Christmas.
#4 Dec 23 2013 at 11:26 AM Rating: Good
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Here in not Canada, those of us who rely on wood to heat our homes have already purchased that which we think we'll need for the year. Just sounds like some poor planning on your part to run out. Good luck finding a solution though. Being cold in Winter sucks.
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#5 Dec 23 2013 at 11:33 AM Rating: Decent
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We can't all afford to "Go to a ******* hotel" every time a storm hits at Christmas.

Then make more money. Jesus, poor people are so stupid. That said, most people hanging out here could probably afford a hotel for a couple of days in southern Ontario. It's not New York City. I'm sure the Kitchner Hampton Inn isn't at capacity.
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To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#6 Dec 23 2013 at 11:53 AM Rating: Decent
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Kastigir wrote:
Here in not Canada, those of us who rely on wood to heat our homes have already purchased that which we think we'll need for the year. Just sounds like some poor planning on your part to run out. Good luck finding a solution though. Being cold in Winter sucks.


I don't heat using wood we have a gas furnace. Wood fireplace is more decoration and to boost heating in the living room in the cold months (old house). It's not a wood stove so has limited heating potential, but it's enough to keep the kids from freezing and light the living room a little better than candles. I had enough split dry wood for a couple nice evening fires, which is typically enough for a couple months for us but one entire night wipes that out quite thoroughly even in conservation mode.

I have quite a bit of wood in the yard but it's not split yet so A. won't burn well and B. Is from a MASSIVE tree and is extremely difficult to split manually, particularly with a lung infection, been waiting for it to freeze nice and solid so I can split it easier but it'll still need to dry after splitting to be of much use.
#7 Dec 23 2013 at 12:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Smasharoo wrote:
We can't all afford to "Go to a @#%^ing hotel" every time a storm hits at Christmas.

Then make more money. Jesus, poor people are so stupid. That said, most people hanging out here could probably afford a hotel for a couple of days in southern Ontario. It's not New York City. I'm sure the Kitchner Hampton Inn isn't at capacity.


Sure and so could we in an emergency, but we're not there yet and here in the real world you have to make decisions based on financial consequences. Given the family could sleep (Camp, for the little ones) in the living room with the fireplace for the night until the power was hopefully back on for significantly less than the few hundred it would cost to put us all up in a local hotel I figured replacing all of the groceries I'm about to lose was a more important use of our emergency funds given what discretionary funds we had remaining post Christmas shopping (we actually have a triple whammy this month but that's a longer story) are being spent on other ice storm expenses..
#8 Dec 23 2013 at 12:02 PM Rating: Good
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Yodabunny wrote:
So here in southern Ontario we've had the worst ice storm I've ever seen. Thousands without power, myself included.

I've been up all night keeping the wood fireplace going to keep the living room warm enough for the kids to sleep in. I have a lung infection and the wife and 6 year old are sick. It's been fun...Ran out of wood at 7 am and had to go hunt some down, which again, was fun given everyone bought it out, along with the road salt, everywhere. Managed to find some compressed logs at a lumber yard and bought all they had and some bags of offcut. Even finding candles, non-scented, for lighting was a chore.

Now, if it was just me none of this would be an issue, I'm fairly rugged and know how to keep warm, survive etc, but it's different for the kids, and certainly for other families who aren't lucky enough to have a wood fireplace to take some of the bite out or don't know how to handle these situations.

Are we too reliant on technology these days? Should we be doing a better job of teaching our children low tech survival skills?

I'm at work right now, so have power and internet, but at home we don't. I think we got hit with the same ice storm you guys did.

We had plenty of warning so we filled up the generator and a spare gas can. We've become more independent since we've moved into the woods as power outages are pretty frequent.

It's only a short term fix though. If we were out of power for long, I imagine it would start getting difficult to find fuel for the generator (also the noise from the generator drives me crazy). We have a wood stove but if we relied on it alone for heat, we'd need to stock way more wood.

We took a couple treks out into the woods yesterday. The icing is pretty magnificent, but I'm worried about my little peach tree.

I've never really thought about teaching the kids survival. We camped a lot so they know how to start a fire and use the coleman stove/lantern. My daughter though commented once (after she was an adult living away from home), that she used to loved power outages because it meant family board night rather than each of us doing our own electronicy type thing.

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#9 Dec 23 2013 at 12:08 PM Rating: Excellent
It's so strange, we had a beautiful weekend here, and it's 85 degrees today.

I was complaining to my husband that Florida was trying to make us sick, since it's 85 today but projected to be 65 tomorrow. Then I saw on Facebook that it was 70 yesterday and 34 today, so I felt bad for complaining. Now I feel really bad knowing that people don't have heat because of ice storms.
#10 Dec 23 2013 at 12:21 PM Rating: Decent
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Yeah, we're in the city, it's not normal to have generators and wood stoves etc. Power is very very reliable here. I think I've reset my clocks 4 times this year until now.

But then something like this happens and you realize how spoiled you've become. I have all of the necessary survival skills so it's not really a huge issue for me, just a really annoying inconvenience made worse due to my current physical condition and I wonder, my kids have all grown up in the city and they really have no idea what it's like to survive cold weather, which I'd always considered a common knowledge skill set. Obviously this is all my own doing given it's my job to teach them these things but I'm fairly positive it's not just me so I'm wondering if modern society is setting us up to fail when the real disasters strike.
#11 Dec 23 2013 at 12:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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You've reminded me, I need to put together an earthquake kit.

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#12 Dec 23 2013 at 12:27 PM Rating: Decent
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I have all of the necessary survival skills so it's not really a huge issue for me, just a really annoying inconvenience made worse due to my current physical condition and I wonder, my kids have all grown up in the city and they really have no idea what it's like to survive cold weather, which I'd always considered a common knowledge skill set. Obviously this is all my own doing given it's my job to teach them these things but I'm fairly positive it's not just me so I'm wondering if modern society is setting us up to fail when the real disasters strike.

Being human is setting us up to fail when disasters strike. The number one cause of death in most prolonged disasters is thinking' I have all of the necessary survival skills so it's not really a huge issue for me' and being wrong. Turns out 'I have no idea what to do here, I'm going to stay put and wait' is almost always what leads to the best possible outcome. People like to be in control and *doing something* though. Alas.
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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#13 Dec 23 2013 at 12:38 PM Rating: Decent
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"Turns out 'I have no idea what to do here, I'm going to stay put and wait' is almost always what leads to the best possible outcome."

Funny, that seems to be what I've done after prepping my family for a safe sit in using what resources and skills I have available and were appropriate to apply. Now, this isn't a real emergency, we were never in any real danger and there are plenty of places we could go if it came to it, but yes, "stay put" is typically the right answer, until it's not. The bulk of the skill part is in knowing the difference and understanding your own capabilities and how to apply them to yourself and your family in the safest way possible. Real life isn't like Survivor Man.
#14 Dec 23 2013 at 12:38 PM Rating: Good
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Samira wrote:
You've reminded me, I need to put together an earthquake kit.


Don't forget a towel.
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#15 Dec 23 2013 at 12:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Samira wrote:
You've reminded me, I need to put together an earthquake kit.



I have a nice emergency kit for the van, came in handy last night :).
#16 Dec 23 2013 at 12:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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Elinda wrote:
Samira wrote:
You've reminded me, I need to put together an earthquake kit.


Don't forget a towel.



And margarita mix in case I can't get fresh limes. The horror!
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#17 Dec 23 2013 at 12:43 PM Rating: Decent
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Elinda wrote:
Samira wrote:
You've reminded me, I need to put together an earthquake kit.


Don't forget a towel.


That's actually really good advice despite the obvious source.
#18 Dec 23 2013 at 12:53 PM Rating: Excellent
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Yodabunny wrote:
But then something like this happens and you realize how spoiled you've become. I have all of the necessary survival skills so it's not really a huge issue for me, just a really annoying inconvenience made worse due to my current physical condition and I wonder, my kids have all grown up in the city and they really have no idea what it's like to survive cold weather, which I'd always considered a common knowledge skill set. Obviously this is all my own doing given it's my job to teach them these things but I'm fairly positive it's not just me so I'm wondering if modern society is setting us up to fail when the real disasters strike.

People who would otherwise be warm and dry in their homes don't typically up and die when the power goes out. I'm not saying it's not worth it to know how to work a fireplace or a generator but part of living in a first world nation (and in an urban area) is that you can spend that time teaching your kids about things like managing their finances rather than how to skin a raccoon and turn its pelt into mittens. Teach 'em some basic common sense stuff (dress in layers, etc) and that should be the extent of it because they'll probably never be in a situation where they're burning the kitchen chairs to stay alive.
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#19 Dec 23 2013 at 12:59 PM Rating: Decent
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"We took a couple treks out into the woods yesterday. The icing is pretty magnificent, but I'm worried about my little peach tree. "

Missed this bit, if your storm was anything like ours I'd avoid this. There's so much weight on the trees up here that they're still breaking. We have entire streets that are covered in tree branches and they keep coming down. 15 minutes north and it's like it never happened though so maybe there's not as much ice on your trees.

Tree on our street was shorting the power lines arcing through the branches, quite the light show. Fire department came, said "nothing we can do have to wait for Hydro" and left because they had worse situations to attend to, hour later the power was out. There are so many trees down here the authorities have had to push back predictions for power restoration to next weekend because they're having to bring in forestry crews to help the hydro crews get to the wires. They had to stop fixing them last night because the crews had been going for 18 hours and had to stop for sleep. Side streets in my neighborhood are like driving through a maze. It's a wonder people aren't hurt, heck maybe they are and just can't call because their phones are dead.

Very localized though, one street is a mess, next is fine. Older neighborhoods seem to be the worst.
#20 Dec 23 2013 at 1:01 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
they'll probably never be in a situation where they're burning the kitchen chairs to stay alive.


...I've done this. Not recently mind you.

You're right though, I just wonder where that line needs to be and if we've gone too far to one side of it.
#21 Dec 23 2013 at 1:16 PM Rating: Good
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Yodabunny wrote:
"We took a couple treks out into the woods yesterday. The icing is pretty magnificent, but I'm worried about my little peach tree. "

Missed this bit, if your storm was anything like ours I'd avoid this.

We were careful. As of last night we'd not been losing any big limbs, but it's continuing to rain and still icing up. Looking at the trees here at work, they've got nearly an inch of ice on them now.

We nearly lost power here a moment ago, but it only went out long enough for everyone to lose whatever they were working on (I was working on this post) and then came back. Smiley: mad

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#22 Dec 23 2013 at 1:18 PM Rating: Decent
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HAHAHA I hate it when that happens. It's always right before some arbitrary deadline too.
#23 Dec 23 2013 at 1:19 PM Rating: Good
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Yodabunny wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
they'll probably never be in a situation where they're burning the kitchen chairs to stay alive.


...I've done this. Not recently mind you.

You're right though, I just wonder where that line needs to be and if we've gone too far to one side of it.

Which side?

When I catch wind of the survivalist's antics I conclude they've gone too far.
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#24 Dec 23 2013 at 1:36 PM Rating: Good
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Our reliance on electricity, specifically. Not heat necessarily. I had very little food on hand that was of any use without a stove, for example. Most of my neighbours didn't know to turn their water off and drain their pipes, or leave them running a tiny bit. No battery operated radio in the house. These are all simple things that I know better about and wasn't as prepared for as I should be.

Luckily I had propane in the barbeque so we could heat water for baby bottle warming, but no spare tank.

None of this was an issue as, like I said, this wasn't a real emergency but if the outage was like the last big outage we had a few years back these would have been real issues (last one was 3 days in summer so no big deal).
#25 Dec 23 2013 at 2:03 PM Rating: Good
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You shouldn't have to shut off your water and drain your pipes for a while during a power outage. Should have enough residual heat to cover for some time. If not you'd benefit from some insulation upgrades.
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#26 Dec 23 2013 at 2:46 PM Rating: Decent
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TirithRR wrote:
You shouldn't have to shut off your water and drain your pipes for a while during a power outage. Should have enough residual heat to cover for some time. If not you'd benefit from some insulation upgrades.


This started Saturday for most people here.
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