Emergency Preparedness – Light

Welcome to our Emergency Preparedness Blog Series! We hope you are enjoying this series. Make sure you take a look at our Food, Water, & Shelter posts if you haven’t already!

We also want to share with you some of the amazing things that helped us. In order for us to be completely transparent, we will get a small portion of affiliate sales if you choose to add any of these fine products to your own emergency preparedness arsenal. Thank you!

It only seems appropriate to be talking about light at this time….for a few reasons; we just celebrated Christmas and the birth of Jesus Christ – the Light of the World and our power was restored on December 24th, 2017 – after 96 days without. WOOHOO!!!

When the power was turned off at about 5:00pm on September 19th we really had no idea exactly how long it would be that we would have to go without it. We had just gone through Irma and were without power for 6 days following that storm. Little did we know how much our patience was going to be tested.

When the power goes out, what is your plan for light? Will you use flashlights? Lanterns? Modern day or oil? Will you use candles? Will you use battery operated? Will you need to charge your lights? Will you use crank powered?

Many here in St. Croix utilize candles in the event of an emergency. This is certainly an option. We have candles in our home, however we chose to utilize some other resources that were safe enough for our small children. I didn’t want to allow my children to light candles as I know they would get too excited about being able to handle fire.

We have many battery-operated flashlights. Most of them require AA batteries. That kind of battery seems to be easier to find. Many here use flashlights that require D batteries which were much harder to find after the storm. We also had a crank powered flashlight that we could continue to crank in order to have light.

Since we were sort of on the subject of batteries – do you have enough? Do you have the right kind? Will they last a long time or are they the generic brand that may only last a short time? Many flashlights, headlamps, and radios run on AA or AAA batteries.

About a year before we moved here, I got a tip on a huge battery deal. I got about 200 AA and AAA batteries for about $20. It was fantastic! We had barely dipped into our supply with random battery-powered toys before we moved here. Once the storms hit, we had a great supply to draw on. They were the generic variety – which don’t last very long – but they provided much needed power. So, take an inventory of your devices that might need batteries, then take an inventory of your battery supply, then stock up!

Headlamps are literally a lifesaver. They kept us in the light throughout this whole ordeal. They were very useful when needing to bucket flush a toilet or making lunches in the morning. They allow for being hands-free. We had 4, one for each of us. It was great when we would sit around in the evenings and have our reading parties with all of us wearing our headlamps.

Lovely, lovely, lanterns – these were also SO helpful. We had this wonderful lantern

that I picked up right before hurricane season got into full swing. It is fantastic because it is solar, crank, and battery powered. You can use any of those methods to provide light. We would place it wherever we were to provide the necessary light. We also were given a couple of lanterns

that ended up being perfect for our boys. They provided a lot of light and we could recharge them via USB cords. They were super light-weight and they were also collapsible.

We didn’t use these options but they are also some you could consider: gaslight lanterns, oil lamps, or lamps to plug into a generator.

No matter what option you choose to light your way during disaster recovery, it can be challenging to do anything in the dark – be it reading, putting on make-up, going to the bathroom, or simply eating. We found ourselves reverting back to the way our ancestors lived – getting up with the sun and going to bed with the sun. Simple yet effective – just the way we like it.