We live in a rural county about 60 miles from Augusta, Georgia. The night of September 26th, 2024 was one we never thought we’d experience so far inland. A full-blown hurricane was upon us (winds were recorded at 80-100mph in our county).
We awoke early on the 27th to no power and 1 bar of very spotty cell service. We built our house on a hill and made sure that no trees were nearby, so our house had minimal damage. We had some water come in and down a wall from the chimney, but plan to fix that with a different kind of deflector that moves and protects water intrusion from wind.
We were finally able to reach family by standing in the field to obtain a signal. Our daughter, her husband, their kids and our son all moved out to stay here. They were in Augusta and the devastation was apocalyptic. They had no power, no internet and no water. Around 50% of the homes had very large trees on them. Sadly, our rental house and our daughter’s rental house included. We are actively dealing with insurance claims and contractors so our renters can have a safe place to live.
The home our daughter’s family lives in was spared, in my opinion, due to divine intervention. Two months ago they had many large pine trees removed from around their home. They left some, but they were the strongest.
My mother’s house is about 5 miles from us and has substantial damage – multiple trees on the house and fences, straight-line winds are suspected because all the pines snapped in half. Divine intervention happened here too, the tree fell on the bedroom and she had fallen asleep in the family room. She is able to fully live on the other side of the house and the kitchen is fine, so in that regard, she is fortunate.
National media coverage of Augusta’s damage was non-existent. It was/is very, very bad. It will take a long time for people to recover and thousands are without a home to live in, rich and poor alike. Most people there were 100% unprepared for this event.
Augusta residents we personally know reported lots of non-resident foot traffic in the nicer neighborhoods and there were many instances of gas siphoning/stealing. A locked gas tank might have helped with that, they might look for a quicker victim. It sure didn’t take long for the scoundrels to surface.
Our family stayed with us for a full week until their water was restored. Our son had power when he left for home, but our daughter’s family went home to no power for 2 more days. As of today, Oct 11, they both STILL have no internet and only have 1 bar of bad cell service.
What we did well
We had water during the entire outage. We have a well, that lost power, but we’ve kept county water connected for $20 per month in case of power loss and fortunately, they had no issues with delivery to our area. However, one part of the county went without water. When we heard about it, we filled up the water bob immediately.
We have plenty of food stored and we went shopping a few days before the storm hit so we were well stocked. I cooked large batches of pasta and rice the day before the storm so we’d have food easy to grab.
We don’t have gas lines in our county so we built an all-electric house. Knowing that power is often temporarily lost in storms, we bought a cheap, basic range a few years ago that works off propane. This is what we cooked on – set up at the edge of the garage. We had 4 full propane tanks but during an entire week, only used about ½ of one. One day we would like an outdoor kitchen, with this range plus a wood range. It’s on the “to-do list”.
We filled up our 20 five-gallon gas cans before the storm and we also filled up all 4 of our vehicles in case we needed to evacuate or siphon gas for generators. It’s a good thing we did that because there was no local gas for over a week (no power). Gas lines a neighboring larger town, had lines 50+ cars deep with limits on purchases. We’d burn more gas than we gained going to get it.
We have 3 medium generators and one small one. One of the generators needed a new fuel line and wasn’t working, but the remainder were used daily. Thankfully we had pre-applied the “one is none rule”. One generator powered our 2 inside fridges, lights, and Internet. (Yes, it worked by plugging the generator into our router and the internet company’s modem under the house). The other ran our 3 garage deep freezers. We rotated and kept 2 on and 1 off every 4-5 hours. The small generator (mainly purchased to run power equipment for farm repairs too far away from the house) was only used when we felt we needed to give the larger generators a short break and some routine maintenance.
We also have two 2000-watt power boxes for inside the house. These ran the washing machine, the tv for entertainment, the router (which helped with cell phones), lights, etc. Laundry was dried on the clothesline.
Taking care of children was challenging, nothing can prepare you for this. There are 4 young children age 8 and under and they didn’t fully understand the gravity of what was happening. They are young, active, and required lots of attention/supervision.
The food we have stored is not what they are used to eating so having more “comfort” food and some things that they are used to would help. They eat very well, but they are used to their organic mac & cheese, ample fresh fruit options, Applegate meats, home-cooked family meals specific to their family, etc. Their Mama is a wonderful cook. We had some of those items, but not enough and honestly, not enough time or energy to cook big meals. They really enjoyed pancakes for breakfast every morning, I just wish we had purchased some of their favorite sausage links to go with it.
We had plenty of books for kids and adults, several people sat on the front porch and read voraciously. Those who aren’t big readers spent a lot of time fishing.
We do have plenty of window a/c units we keep on hand for summertime HVAC breakdowns, but we didn’t use them because they would have sucked the generators dry. Thankfully, temps were only in the mid-80s during the day and cool enough at night that everyone was comfortable.
Our chickens survived unscathed. The day before the storm hit, we moved them into a small mobile coop and then rolled it under the lean-to attached to our garage. We attached the coop to our two tractors flanking the coop with come-along straps. Even better, their location was totally protected by the garage from the Eastern winds.
Bathing was simple. We have an outside shower connected to our plumbing. Adults and older kids took cold showers. The youngest kids bathed in a galvanized tub filled with cold water and with warm water that was heated. They bathed during the day and loved it.
We had pumped our septic system 2 years prior. With all the rain in the ground around the drain lines, toilet flushing, and dishwashing I started getting nervous about it keeping up. We immediately instituted a men must pee outdoors rule and women have to throw out pee toilet paper (or use cloth wipes) and then apply the old California adage for saving water: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow”.
We chose our location wisely so security was not an issue, though we were situationally aware. There was not a chance to plan for lengthy and eventual long-term security problems.
What we need to improve on
Test and repair generators before the next storm arrives so that we can buy necessary repair parts.
We had all the parts for a solar cart but it’s been on our very long “to-do list”. During the outage the men built it and got it running. It’s about 800 watts of panels, with an inverter and room for the batteries, that they didn’t hook up. We learned that while it does work, a much larger system would be needed to power essentials. If we don’t expand our solar system, a full-house PTO generator would be nice. They are reasonable and we have the capability to store a few hundred gallons of diesel.
Hot water for showers was an issue for some people (I was one of them). We are looking for a plan to heat water in something other than a solar shower bag. We have some ideas – looking at videos from Southern Prepper 1 and Engineer 775’s YouTube channels
Our detached garage’s doors need new seals. Wind came from the east, pounded on them for hours and made its way into the garage. Being a pole barn, we also had water come in through the roof ventilation. It was all mopped up easily but would have been a disaster if it had landed on something of great value.
What we learned
We spoke to our nearest neighbors a few days before the storm and told them what they needed to do to prepare (buy food, propane to cook with, lots of gas, etc). They assured us they would do it. Unfortunately, they did not heed our advice and became a burden to others. If I had to do this over again, I would have insisted that they make the preps and go with them to get it done. They are wonderful older people and just needed a stronger push and clearly, some help.
Keep all equipment in working order. Test it at least quarterly. Never have just one critical piece of equipment – 2 or 3 will be needed.
We have a mental list of SHTF living rules and jobs that everyone will need to follow, for example, John Smith’s 1607 rule will apply: “He that will not worke, shall not eate”. Don’t get me wrong, all adults worked hard, but one could have done a little more to keep the workload equal. We tolerated it because there was an end in sight, but that would absolutely not be tolerated in long-term SHTF situation. In that scenario, even kids will have age-appropriate jobs.
We need to speed up our prep “to-do” list. We have two rain barrels installed and working, but we have two more just sitting there waiting. We have four 275-gallon totes that also need to be put into action. We have the makings for a second solar cart.
Pine trees are very weak. An oak fell on our rental house, but much of the widespread damage was due to pine trees. Once the tree companies are freed up from disaster work, we need to have them remove a very big one from the back of our rental house.
We have a cabin on our property and wish we had it closer to our house (within sight). We plan to move it closer so that it can provide secondary living quarters.
We wish we’d taken more pictures during our week, but honestly, we were so busy it was mostly overlooked which leads me to the final lesson learned below.
Every day the adults picked out a comedy movie to be watched after kids were in bed. We turned off the lights and got it going. Within 30 minutes someone fell asleep, soon after another said they needed to go to bed. Everyone was mentally and physically tired. We weren’t prepared for that level of exhaustion.
We are still exhausted from the ordeal. But we thank God often for the many preps that we had in place, the humility to learn from our mistakes and to be given a “trial run” for a long-term grid-down situation.
We are thankful for the many men who worked 14+ hour days and traveled many states away from their families to restore our power. As of now, I’ve heard that 85-90% in our county have power restored. Our county’s lines and roads were an absolute disaster, most impassable. We honestly don’t even know how they got it done.
We are praying for our neighbors in North Carolina as they faced a totally different, deadly, and sudden situation. Their losses are truly unimaginable.
We are so thankful that all our family and friends are healthy and well. We treasure the week we got with our entire family under one roof.