Blackouts happen everywhere and they can happen at any time of the year. They are mostly common in the height of the summer and in the depths of the winter. The heat can often buckle the electricity, which causes waves of blackouts throughout neighbourhoods and suburbs. While for kids blackouts can feel quite exciting, they are a source of panic for most adults. This is because it becomes a scramble to meet basic needs of the home and keep food that has been frozen or refrigerated fresh.
Ensuring that you have a new generator in time for the season is one way to help to get around the blackouts that are happening because then you can use it for backup electricity. But you need to be prepared. It’s imperative that you prepare for a blackout so that you could handle one even if the chance of you having to deal with one is low. Let’s take a look at the tips for managing a blackout at home.
- Let there be light. You need candles, torches and you need batteries to back them up. Having lighters and matches to hand is also a good idea but keep these out of the reach of children. Stocking up on lighting is important for a black out because you won’t have access to electricity. This means you can’t turn on the lights in your home and that is not just a scary prospect but a dangerous one. You need to ensure that you have alternatives that you can use to light your home and you can even use torches that are all wound up to operate.
- Get a backup generator. We talked about having a new generator for the summer or winter, but a backup generator is important for every family to have. A good generator will make it very easy for you to run your mate appliances and prevent your food from spoiling. While most people don’t have the room for an entire house generator, a smaller one is equally important so that you can charge your cell phone and keep your food cold so that maintaining a generator is one of the best investments that you could make.
- Stock your pantry. You don’t have to be a doomsday prepper to ensure that you have a pantry filled with canned goods, but you need to make sure that you have emergency food to feed everybody because nobody knows how long the blackout will last. Emergency food is not the time for choosing your favourites so you need to ensure that you have nonperishable items so that your home can be prepared.
- A first aid kit. Blackouts mean accidents and more likely to happen, so if you want to make sure that nobody ends up in the hospital in the middle of a blackout – which is never a good time – then you need to make sure that you have a first aid kit to hand so that you have the basics that you need in case of an accident.
