Hurricane Helene After Action Review

When Hurricane Helene hit the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) on the Georgia/South Carolina border, it retained Hurricane Category 1 wind speeds. The destruction was widespread, and many disaster preparedness plans were put into effect. This is what we learned.

Water

• You really can’t have enough water on hand for a situation like this. Being able to restock on potable water, or boil to make safe municipal water, is essential. If you run out of water all your other preps start to matter less and less. 
• We also keep a lot of “hydration salts” products on hand, as we do a lot of outdoor activities with our children's Trail Life troop, so we were well prepped to stay hydrated. 
• I would say a minimum is a 36 pack of 0.5 liter bottles per person per four days of use, at least in our heat conditions, but do your own math for your own situation.

Gas

• You’ll need a lot, and in two types: unleaded gas for vehicles and generators, and 2-cycle gas for chainsaws and pole trimmers. There's a lot of wood cutting that has to be done immediately after a storm passes in order to open roads. 
• When we needed to refill gas cans, we emptied the ones on hand into my pickup and headed east to Columbia, SC. It took 60 miles to get to a gas station without a waiting line, two miles off the I-20. 
• The 2-cycle gas needs to be ethanol free, or it can eat the plastic/rubber fuel lines in all the “made in China” 2-cycle engines that power tools these days. I just pay the premium to pick up a 1 or 3 liter bottle from Home Depot or Lowes when shopping. 
• Have funnels, because modern gas cans suck (never forgive the EPA for what they did to the gas can) and you may need a funnel to properly fuel a machine without spilling too much.

Tools

• The most commonly needed tool was a chainsaw, the second a pole saw. Get the kind that uses gasoline, as there is more work to be done than electrics will be able to handle.
• Have extra blades, bars, and bar oil to keep them running. 
• One friend of mine used a lot of bow saw and teenage boy labor to clear branches, but the chainsaw is going to be faster. 
• Pro tip: you need to know more than just the chain length, as different brands will have slightly different link sizes, so know what you need in case you have to have someone else do your shopping.

Cooking

• We cooked on a single burner propane stove, a cinder block “rocket stove”, and a campfire. Of the three, the rocket stove and propane burner got used the most. The propane burner was fastest to boiling water for coffee or soup, and the rocket stove was best for big family meals (but it does take a little longer to get going). 
• We tried to use a Coleman white gas stove, but the pump system froze up and needs to be replaced, which is probably a project for this winter. 
• If I had to recommend any one system, it would be the single propane camp burner and a two pack of 1 lb propane bottles. It's light, cheap, and doesn’t go bad like a white gas stove can. 
  
  

  

  Ozark Trail Single Burner Backpacking Propane Stove 
  

  
  
• If you have room on your shelter location to set up a cinder block rocket stove, absolutely do that as well. To speed up the rocket stove starting time, I used my plumber's torch to get the central chamber area hot enough really fast, which is cheating but uses way less propane than just cooking with propane.

Medicine

• All four of us in my family got the flu. Thankfully, this was early October not mid-August, and temperatures didn’t hit into the 90s except for a few brief bits on some afternoons. But having influenza in the south with no air conditioning is a miserable experience. 
• We didn't need to hit up a pharmacy as we had NSAIDs to bring down fevers, and expectorants to help clear lungs. A prepper’s medicine cabinet ought to be able to keep a family of four through a 7 day disruption of electricity and potable water.
• Those hydration salts really helped me get through the worst of the “man flu” that laid me out for most of a week.

Luxuries

• Generators and portable air conditioning units aren't a necessity to survive, but they do make “sheltering in place” more comfortable. 
• We didn’t use either, but we plan to get a Jackery and solar charging system for camping gear anyways, and that would have made this little “free Amish lifestyle experience” a little less spartan, and it would have allowed us to run our chest freezer enough to keep frozen proteins frozen.
• As it was, we lost maybe a few hundred dollars in groceries that could have been prevented with a small solar generator system.

Tribe

• We know our neighbors, they know us. When we would make the 120 mile round trip supply run to anywhere open, we made sure we had their needs and wants list. 
• When we were eating out our thawed chest freezer we came across a turkey breast, really too big for us as a family of 4, so we let our neighbor deep fry it and they made mashed potatoes and mac & cheese; we added green beans to make a little Thanksgiving meal a tad early.
• Build your tribe before there is a problem, because the worst place to meet for the first time is disaster response. 

Cell Phones

• The cellular network stayed up, but bandwidth was very clogged, dropping me from 5g down to LTE on multiple occasions as cable internet (the majority of home broadband in our area) was cut just as much as the electricity. 
• Group texts became the normal way for people to organize support for people in need, and it worked out pretty well. 
• Internet came back up in our neighborhood two days after electricity.

Final Thoughts

• We were incredibly blessed to be in the 50% of customers in our area who got electricity back after seven days. Other than not having a portable power solution to extend the useful food storage period of our chest freezer, we were pretty happy with the skills and resources we’ve built up as a family. We didn’t even have to open up any of our freeze-dried food stores, as our home survived the winds. 
• For those who lost their home to the storm, they may have had a different experience, and my wife and I discussed creating “prep boxes” that could be sealed long term and placed in a shed just in case we needed to direct a neighbor to resources if we weren't there to help with disaster response. 
• Resources can be shared, or can be destroyed in the disaster, but skills are something you keep with you. If you are new to prepping and have to choose between "stocking resources" and "building resilience skills" I'd recommend the skills building option.