Being prepared is a journey

Three years ago yesterday, on February 14, 2023, two days after Cyclone Gabrielle had left Kirikiriroa-Hamilton behind, we lost power in my neighbourhood, something I mentioned in my treatise post about the cyclone a week later. It turned out that the power was shut off in order to repair a fallen cable, which is why it was only off for a couple hours—though I didn’t know any of that when I made the Facebook post up top.

In the part of my post where I talked about the power outage, I talked about what I did to cope, thinking the power might be off for a couple days. I mentioned going to one of the hardware home centres to buy a shop light that runs on the same 18v batteries I use for my power tools (and that now also powers the stick vacuum I bought last year). I later misplaced that light during one of my millions of failed attempts to tidy the garage, but, fortunately, I haven’t needed it since.

I also mentioned that I got an LPG (propane) bottle for the BBQ so I could cook, and that I couldn’t get it to work. That’s still not working. However, I didn’t mention that I’ve never actually used a gas BBQ, because that had always been Nigel’s job and I never learned). However, I still have the full gas bottle, and now that I’ll be able to actually use the patio I want to get the BBQ going again. Failing that, I also still have an LPG table-top outdoor heater that was the only thing Nigel wanted for his 40th birthday, and it may be more useful to me, particularly with Autumn only two weeks away. Or, not.

At any rate, I blame sleep deprivation three years ago for my lame jokes in the post. Coincidentally, parts of the country, especially the east coast of the North Island, have been experiencing a big (but non-cyclone) big storm, and that includies areas that got hit by a fatal storm three weeks ago. Kirikiriroa-Hamilton’s weather wasn’t too bad, though, fortunately.

In the three years since that cyclone, I haven’t done anything about electricity reslience, like adding a battery bank to my solar power system or getting a battery back-up that I can use to keep my fridge running it the power goes out. I still think a single back-up is a better option than a whole-house battery backup, but it’s a huge topic and researching it has require far more time than I’ve had available. Finding the right solution is still on the agenda, though—alongside so many other things.

New Zealand, like most places, has been experiencing more bad storms more frequently than, say, 30 years ago when I arrived in New Zealand. That trend will only continue in the years ahead, and we all need to do what we cane to prepare doe “severe weather events”. Despite everything, I’m actually better prepared than I was in 2023. That’s a good start.