Thursday, February 3, 2011

Winter Survival Tips for Disaster Volunteers


Pack at least one more set of underwear and socks than you think you are going to need.

After 20 hours of near-continuous snowfall, don’t count on there being any hot water left in the showers in the courthouse basement.

The fact that you*are used to mediocre food and worse accommodations does not mean that everyone else is. Be patient with your spoiled rotten fellow-citizens who should be grateful they’re getting hot soup and an army blanket and aren’t freezing in snowbanks.

To guarantee continuous police and road crew support, let it be known that you will have coffee and doughnuts available all night for responders. I have a lot of new BFF’s. Most of them strapping young men in uniform (with powdered sugar on their chests).

Don’t venture out in anything smaller than a mid-size. Flora the Red Menace got me through every single snowdrift.

(*ok, me. My standards are low; as long as there’s running water and no artillery, I’m satisfied. Throw in a steady supply of coffee and gedunk, and I’m practically giddy).

7 comments:

Ladytats said...

Love your car. Hope you don't get the wind that we had yesterday. all that wonderful white stuff with move all around and you get to deal with it a second time.

museum girl said...

You are fantastic! The world could use more people like you.

Sam said...

You forgot to stock enough toliet paper! And we (the general public) thank you. And the strapping young men with sugar on their chests.

Packrat said...

What a mess! Thank God for the court house basement.

Anonymous said...

the scary thing is that you and the courthouse basement, woefully under-funded, are the front-line for civic disasters from weather to worse...and you and the other first responders will always be under-funded, it seems.
but, I have been rescued before by forest service fire-fighters, so I'm perhaps biased in your favor....and not just because I want your yarn stash.
a sharon in wyo.

Shay said...

Thank you for those kind words, Anon, but please don't put me in the same class as smoke-jumpers.

I just hang out with cops and eat donuts.

Sisiggy said...

Since we (the farm where I work) are on our county's role as supplying food in the event of a disaster, this means one thing -- if snow stays around for any length of time, the road into the farm is plowed by the state. I'd hate to contemplate the disaster that would call for a need for our vegetables or, worse, our seeds. It's good to have that base covered, but it's rather funny that there is a "perk" to it. (I think canned soup is perfectly acceptable for the disasters that are more of a reality -- snow or flooding). Still, we do maintain a rather smelly stockpile of root vegetables during the winter.

Then, again, we've never availed ourselves of that "perk," since we are on the absolute bottom of the state's priority list in being "plowed out." Last year, a week after we had a snowfall of three feet, as of a week later, we never saw a plow. By that time I'd called in a favor and got someone else to plow it out so I didn't take my life into my hands powering through every day with my faithful old Outback (which performed better than some 4wd vehicles, I have to admit).