This is my (Sub­ur­ban’s)  slight­ly over­due post­mortem of Hur­ri­cane Sandy.  It’s Thanks­giv­ing day as I write this, and I want to say thank you again to all of you, my read­ers, as well as a Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing to you and your fam­i­lies.  My thoughts this hol­i­day week­end are with those who’s homes and lives have been for­ev­er changed by the hur­ri­cane a few weeks ago.

It’s no secret that many are still with­out pow­er, heat, etc. from Hur­ri­cane Sandy and the Nor’east­er that just came bar­rel­ing through the North­east­ern Unit­ed States.  For what it is worth, I was affect­ed much less than oth­ers in the NY and NJ areas that were dev­as­tat­ed by the storm. In fact, I am almost embar­rassed to dis­cuss it, but think  it is impor­tant to con­vey what worked for me, and what I lacked that could have been more help­ful. How­ev­er, I was with­out pow­er for almost five days, and I found that I had more than a few prod­ucts that help make my life eas­i­er over the week, and I want­ed to share them with you.  There were more than a cou­ple…

You will prob­a­bly notice sev­er­al pieces of gear ded­i­cat­ed to light­ing.  I do not under­es­ti­mate the require­ment for light.  Since much of what we do is done dur­ing dusk or when it is dark out light­ing is both a con­ve­nience and a psy­cho­log­i­cal asset dur­ing an emer­gency, that I liken to hav­ing a camp­fire.

• Dura­cell DPP-600HD Pow­er­pack 600 Jump Starter & Emer­gency Pow­er Source with Radio:  This peice of gear was “almost” invalu­able in help­ing me keep many of my low volt­age devices charged, such as my phone and the ASCELLA Emer­gency Light Bulb.  It offered me some peice of mind that I would be able to charge my devices with no pow­er at all for an unde­ter­mined length of time.  I did­n’t real­ly use the flash­light or the radio, but it felt good to know, I had three out­lets of pow­er to use if I need­ed to, even if I had to ration pow­er.  Speak­ing of rationing pow­er, I did turn my mobile phone off and on at defined points in the day to con­serve pow­er as well.  I dod­n’t want to be an ener­gy hog, and glad I did it in order to ration the bat­tery.
• Etón FR160B Microlink Self-Pow­ered AM/FM/NOAA Weath­er Radio with Flash­light, Solar Pow­er and Cell Phone Charg­er:  This was prob­a­bly one of the most valu­able assets I had dur­ing the pow­er out­age. It offered news, enter­tain­ment, emer­gency updates, a way to trick­le charge my phone, etc.  I charged it in the win­dow dur­ing the day, and kept the vol­ume at a lev­el where the bat­tery would last almost the whole evening.  When the bat­tery went dead after a few hours, I would sim­ply wind it up by the han­dle for a cou­ple min­utes and turn it back on to lis­ten to some music or the news.   Those that say “radio is dead” because of Inter­net ser­vices are sad­ly mis­tak­en.  In an emer­gency sit­u­a­tion the radio was the only com­mu­ni­ca­tion method I relied on to get my emer­gency news and enter­tain­ment. Do not under­es­ti­mate this device and buy two of them so you have them…
• Hybrid HL40 Solar / Bat­tery Pow­ered Flash­light:  Anoth­er tool that used the sun as a renew­able resource, I kept it at my side most of the week I was iwthout pow­er.  Again, charg­ing it in the sun dur­ing the day, and using it in the evening for light duty work, helped make the dark­ness bet­ter.  Best part, no bat­ter­ies burned up because they were rechar­gable.  Going to pick up a cou­ple more of these for the Bug Out Bag as well as the apart­ment.  Use them as a pri­ma­ry or back­up flash­light.  The choice is yours…
• The ASCELLA 5 Watt Emer­gency Light Bulb / Flash­light:  I wrote about this Light Bulb, and did­n’t real­ize how use­ful it actu­al­ly would become until the pow­er went out.   I had it screwed into my desk lamp in my home office.  Upon the pow­er going out, I moved the whole lamp to the kitchen so that I could use it to cook over the stove since the stove light was not work­ing.  I sim­ply turned it on and off and did­n’t have to have some­one hold a lantern or flash­light for me.  It was invalu­able to me dur­ing pow­er out­age.  The best part, the light went on auto­mat­i­cal­ly when the pow­er went out.  It allowed me to find it with­out fum­bling and turn it on and off so the bat­tery would not die.  Loved this device and as men­tioned will be buy­ing sev­er­al for gifts and for myself.  At 29.00 you may think it is a bit expen­sive, and maybe it is, but when the pow­er went out, I did­n’t think about the pric­ing, I thought about the con­ve­nience.  Great device that can help any­one any­time.
• Mr. Heater Big Bud­dy Heater:  As the tem­per­a­tures dipped into the high 30’s in the evening, I bun­dled up, and was rel­a­tive­ly warm, but when that chill hits, you just want heat and to be warm.  With­out the abil­i­ty to start a camp­fire, and hon­est­ly want­ed to do, I fired up my Mr. Heater.  It took the 45 degree liv­ing room of my apart­ment, and heat­ed it up to a steady 65 degrees.   I would turn it on high, and then back it down to low, and this thing worked like a champ.  It allowed me to relax a bit more and stay warmer.  My next pur­chase as a heater back­up is going to be a free stand­ing kerosene heater that will heat 1000 square feet of space.  That should heat my apart­ment nice­ly.  There is a gen­er­a­tor in the works as well, as I already spoke to the house own­er about it.
• 15 Watt Solar Pan­el:  I used this to trick­le charge my Dura­cell DPP-600HD Pow­er­pack every day.  I put the pan­el in the win­dow and let it go.  Sad­ly, I do not know how well it did or did not work as the meter on the Dura­cell is dig­i­tal and rounds to the near­est 10 per­cent.  It seemed to slow­ly do the job how­ev­er.  45 Watt input would prob­a­bly been a much bet­ter load, how­ev­er.  Some­thing that I may look at in the future…
• Sanyo Enloop Recharge­able Bat­ter­ies:  Rechar­gables I used in my small LED tac­ti­cal flash­lights that I had lay­ing around the house…  Mak­ing sure they were charged pri­or to the out­age, they last­ed all week with­out recharge or replace­ment.  They say Enloop are cur­rent­ly the best re, and I have to agree cur­rent­ly…
• The Water­Bob:  As a safe­ty mea­sure, not know­ing whether or not the water was going to be affect­ed in my area, I not only had my 35 gal­lons of stored water, I filled up the Water­bob in my tub with about anoth­er 50 gal­lons of water.  While I did­n’t require the use of it, it was good to get it out of the box and have to have a prac­ti­cal use for it.  It seemes pret­ty durable, was super easy to use, and there is no rea­son every­one should not have one of these sit­ting in the bath­room clos­et in the event they need one in an emer­gency.  I was glad I had it and real­ly did­n’t need it.  Had I need­ed to, I would have been very thank­ful for hav­ing it…
• Kerosene Lanterns:  Let me just say, a fan­tas­tic tool to have, for two rea­sons.  First, just to have the light, and a nat­ur­al glow.  Sec­ond, heat.  When your hands got a lit­tle chilly, you just sim­ply cup them a few inch­es from the top of the lantern and the heat of the flame heats you right up.  Nice incre­men­tal heat source and light­ing source.  I used them every day the pow­er was out.  Loved them.
• Cole­man LED Lantern: This got some pret­ty heavy use.  With 4 D bat­ter­ies, I thought for sure by the end of the week they would be dead.  Not to men­tion that the bat­ter­ies had been in ther for over a year at this point… Not even close to dead.  Why?  The D bat­ter­ies charge small rechar­gables in either side of the remov­able pan­els, and then allow you to use the bat­ter­ies in the pan­els, vs. the 4D bat­tery pack locat­ed in the bot­tom of the lantern.  Great tool, a bit expen­sive, but the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the device itself made it a great peice of gear.
• Cof­fee Per­cu­u­la­tor and Cof­fee Press:  Com­fort foods, is all I can say.  When the pow­er is out and you can­not use the drip cof­fee mak­er, these were my tools of choice for boil­ing water for cof­fee and tea.  I did­n’t have to skip a beat with my morn­ing cof­fee or my evening tea.  Made life MUCH more bear­able under the cir­cum­stances…
• Portable Camp­ing Toi­let:  Yes, I have one of these in my apart­ment in a cor­ner hid­den away… It’s there because I acci­den­tal­ly ordered it one day on Amazon.com.  It was about 45.00 — 50.00 when I bought it, and thought about send­ing it back, but with all the camp­ing I do, I am sure it will come in handy in the future.  Until then, if there is an emer­gency where I have to shel­ter in, and the sewage sys­tem is down for a short peri­od of time, I think that this will come in pret­ty handy.  While I did not “need” to use it this time around, I was glad it was in the cor­ner in the event I need­ed to…