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In the Dark
Our solutions in a power outage during an ice storm
We have spent the past few weeks going over the various aspects of living more comfortably in an electrical outage that could last more than a few hours. This is not an unlikely situation because a few years ago we had an ice storm. It created a power outage that lasted ten days.
Lights
Of course, the lights went out. Fortunately, we had several ways that we can make light. We have candles. Candles have long been a source of light. The problem with candles though is that they are inexpensive and convenient, careless handling of them can cause fires. Despite the fact I had them, because I had a young child in the house at the time, I chose to use other options for light.
We used kerosene lanterns with a lot of success as well. Their lights provide a warm glow on those cold winter nights. Kerosene is great for long term storage too because kerosene has a much longer shelf life than many other lighting options. Like candles, however, they do involve a flame so care must be taken when using them.
We also had LED lights. We would have liked to have had solar power sources to keep them charged up, or even use rechargeable batteries and keep spares that we could continually charge. Winter storms may create problems with the ability of them to…