Being prepared for a serious disaster also means you're prepared for trivial inconveniences. Earlier this week we has some storms roll through that knocked out the power. Since I'm crazy that way, I've got a half dozen flashlights I can find in the dark, including the one I always have in my pocket. I fired up our old Coleman lantern and we had plenty of light for reading and doing dishes.
Since we were the only house with an obvious light a neighbor who I haven't met came by and asked if we had a flashlight she could borrow. She said her kids were not very pleased with being in the dark. I lend her a good flashlight and a (rather crappy) crank-up LED lantern. I figured that way her kids could be part of the solution, cranking that lantern to keep the light going. Seriously, it lasts like 3 minutes before you have to crank it up again. But as far as something to lend out it's totally worth keeping around.
I also recently put together a solar recharging station, so I pulled the battery pack out and plugged in our phones. It'll be nice to have a fully charged phone in case our electricity isn't restored very quickly.
It did make me realize that I need to get or make a adapter to plug my ham radio into my charging station. My ham radio will run a long time in listen mode, which is great to listen to the storm reports, but if I need to transmit much it would be nice to be able to recharge it. I'll have to make that a priority.
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