re: Hurricane Preparations – Next time

The problem I have as with “prepping” in general is deciding what exactly I’m prepping for, or where to draw the line. If it’s “worst case scenario” well then obviously it’s never ending and very time and money consuming. I think it’s good to delineate exactly what the threshold is and plan based on that. In most real-life examples, in all but the worst cases, there’s a decent timeline of 1-2 weeks for things to improve that could have a good effect on planning, like roads being cleared, reasonable access to gas and food/water, etc.

This didn’t seem to be the case in many/most areas after Katrina, where clearing roads and restoring power seemed to take much longer, but things seem to have improved (gasp*) in the years since, better line maintenance, better planning for clearing, even down to more people owning chainsaws to do some things themselves.

Point being, factoring that in, expected reasonable access to supplies, could be very relevant. Buying and storing less pre-storm specifically. And post storm, most people that stay behind don’t have much to do anyway, so punching out an hour or so to get supplies isn’t a huge inconvenience.