Ice Storm : How to Be Prepared

Here in Ontario we have had a severe ice storm this weekend.. I know it's hit most of the province and parts of the United States. Our area experienced non-stop freezing rain from Friday morning until Sunday afternoon.

 

Luckily, we kept power most of the weekend and we were prepared.

 

My vehicle on Sunday morning had about 1 1/2 to 2 inches of ice coating it. I haven't seen anything like this in years! We also have a huge tree branch down in our backyard, which luckily did not hit the house or even the deck, or take out the fence.

 

Some tips on how to be prepared :

1) Have plenty of bottles of water stored. 

This will be essential if your power goes out and will allow you to have a drink, wash your hands, etc.

2) Have salt on hand.

Our driveway was a sheet of ice - doesn't matter if you have a 4x4 vehicle or not on ice. We wouldn't have been able to move the vehicles if we didn't have a couple bags of salt to use.

3) Don't go outside if you don't HAVE to.

We listen to a free police broadcast in our area and it was wild last night. So many police officers were getting frustrated at the amount of accidents and people going off the road. They ended up refusing to go on the main highway here as they didn't want to endanger their lives trying to save the people who didn't listen to the warnings to stay off the road!

4) Have lots of readily available food.

And by this I mean food you don't have to cook. Might not be the best food choices but it will make due if you are without power for days - chips, cookies, bananas, oranges, many possibilities!

5) Batteries and cellphones charged.

We made sure to have all flashlights charged and working with fresh batteries. We also made sure both of our cellphones were charged, just in case, because if we had no power that would be our only way to communicate with anyone else.

6) Enjoy board games.

If our power went out for a while, I had full plans of pulling out the cribbage board and enjoying a night in of playing card games and board games! It would've been a quiet evening relaxing and just being with ourselves, instead of stressing out about not having television to watch for once!

To anyone else in the impacted areas, I hope you stayed safe and were prepared! We were lucky, but I know many people in our area have been told they will be without power for up to a week.