The Mighty Storm

Hurricane Helene rampaged through Western North Carolina a few weeks ago, drowning hundreds of souls, washing away homes, bridges, and roads, felling millions of trees, and leaving hundreds of thousands without power and water. This post is dedicated to all those who lost everything.

So many houses along creeks and rivers in this area were simply swept away-- knocked off their foundations by logs, swept into the current, and swiftly broken up into flotsam and jetsam. Many homes on sides of mountains were destroyed by landslides. If their occupants didn't get out in time, too often they were swept away too. 

The biggest lesson I took from my experience is that the meteorologists only give you a couple days of advance notice before a natural disaster hits, so it is critical that you follow the weather on a daily basis, trust the forecasts, and immediately start preparing to be stranded and out of water and power when the forecast starts to sound dire. 

One way to be prepared is to own a generator. I've wanted a generator for years, but the cost has always held me back. I've now decided to purchase one and have it hooked into our electrical panel and connected to our 1000-gallon propane tank so that it automatically kicks in when we lose power. In some ways, we were lucky: the temperature was perfect after the storm, so heating was not an issue. But in a winter storm, having a generator or other non-electric heating source will be critical.

Another way to be prepared is to have lots of bottled water on hand, and to fill bathtubs and buckets with water so that toilets can still be used. The novelty of pooping in a bucket wears off pretty quickly. Even if we have a generator, our well is on our neighbor's land, so we will probably still be without water in an outage. It was remarkable how much aid flowed in within just a couple days, but I know it didn't reach the most remote areas for much longer.

Finally, a longer-term impact of the storm has been on IV fluid availability. Apparently, Baxter's in North Cove makes 70% of the IV fluid for this country, and there simply isn't capacity elsewhere to take up the slack while they are offline. This lack of redundancy is frightening in itself-- but it's also frightening that in coming weeks, hospitals across the country may completely run out of IV fluid. Hospitals are probably realizing that they need to create and maintain the capacity to make their own basic fluids, if worst comes to worst-- just like they did in the old days.

Climate change- induced natural disasters keep throwing us back into the days of the frontier. Though we pull ourselves back into the 21st century at great cost, the next calamity is lurking just around the corner-- and it may be even worse. Be prepared!