A while back we had a pretty big storm, and someone posted in one of the local groups that they had gotten locked out of the garage when a power failure rendered the electric garage door inoperative. The garage where they had unfortunately been keeping the emergency lanterns. In a separate location from where they had been keeping the batteries.
Hey, this kind of thing happens to everyone.
A big part of our problem is that we take electricity so much for granted that we don’t even think about ensuring redundancy. Such a very basic thing and we don’t even think about it.
I do, and I know a lot of you do also, but I’m talking us as a collective. So called modern society. It’s a little bit too “modern” in my opinion when a person cannot open their garage door (or operate a water pump, or any number of other actions) when the electricity is out!
Yes, some advance planning in this case would’ve been helpful — such as bringing the lanterns into the house, not storing them in a separate location from the batteries, etc. But the fundamental problem starts further upstream!
I like to keep candles and lanterns in the garage and in every area of the house. But also the garage door is operated manually.
Story from a hurricane a couple years back: We woke up in the morning, first day of power outage, and I produced coffee. Didn’t even have to break out the twig stove. Or wait till the sun was high enough that we could heat up water in the solar oven.
Magic? No — The night before, I just figured there might be a power outage coming so I boiled up some water and put it in the thermos. Voilà morning coffee! It was great seeing the smile on a housemate’s face.
Do you know what also creeps me out? Car keys that need batteries.
I mean, what???? Really???
(Last time I owned a car, the car keys were still just regular keys. I never got used to the new thing even though sometimes I rent a car that has one of those.)
When I mentioned that on my page, someone told me that there’s actually a little tiny physical key tucked inside of the battery-powered key fob. Well that’s a relief! Except if the person doesn’t know that there’s a key in there, which apparently happens.
And along the same lines, I never did get over the loss of hand-cranked car windows.