New Orleans Hurricane report. Sunday 0900hrs

 Heavy rain at times last night. No rain now but wind really picking up. Neighbor's tree not making my happy right now as it looms over my back fence and empty chicken pen. The streets are empty now but I've got a month's worth of non-perishable food and bottled water laid in. as a bonus, a lovely young lady that I know dropped off five packages of Oreo cookies yesterday as hurricane snacks. Worried now that I might need more milk but I got cookies. The gas stations were either empty or had very long lines yesterday but I'd already topped off both of my vehicles and set in plenty of extra gas and diesel. Grocery stores are about empty too but again, I got mine with plenty of lead time. We had days to prep and there was no excuse for not doing so.

Watching the stupid people on-line last night and this morning has been entertaining and frustrating. Some people are just starting to ask where they can get bottled water and batteries. Another is asking someone to drive to her house this morning and drop off a "battery powered phone charger" in case the power goes out for "a couple of days."  Power loss is a given and even Entergy, the utility company, is talking 2-3 WEEKS to restore it. And then there's the guy yesterday all over local social media asking if anyone will loan him a generator and gasoline. For free. On the day before. Some people's kids...

The dogs are all visibly nervous this morning. That's interesting in itself as I'm pretty sure they haven't been watching the news. Merida and the guest dog are scrapping constantly because the guest dog is trying to establish dominance and Merida ain't having it.

At least the dishes are done and the laundry is all washed and dried. If nothing else I'm getting a lot of long-deferred cleaning done in between other tasks, so if the house doesn't blow away or flood it should at least be clean.

I'll be wearing a sidearm constantly until things get straight again. Long guns are ready too. If I have to go out for any reason, one will be coming with me. Many people evacuated but most of the knuckleheads are still here. I remember the lawlessness after Katrina. Not playing that here.

And a special shout-out to our incompetent mayor, Latoya Cantrell. She was on the news a couple days ago offering up excuses as to why she hadn't initiated a mandatory evacuation. "There wasn't time" she claims. She managed to evacuate over a thousand jail inmates two days ago though but I guess that was more important than moving out hospital patients, senor citizens or other people who might have been moved to safety by now. Two days not used to move anyone on the plethora of available buses sitting all other the place. Remember flooded post-Katrina bus yards everyone? They learned nothing from that disgrace. I hope no one dies but I wonder how many of those who may could have been moved out has our mayor had her act together.

Eating down the last of the perishable food today and tomorrow. Then it's boxed, canned and dried goods for the duration if need be. And I'll have more updates later as the situation evolves so long as I can still get on-line.

Greetings from Ground zero: New Orleans

 16 years to the day, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we now have Hurricane Ida getting ready to come ashore tomorrow as a projected Category 4 hurricane. 

Most of my friends have left, but a lot haven't.  I'm staying for them, and because I could not get away with all of my animals, weapons and ammunition. I won't leave the critters or the guns to the looters. So as of this writing, I have four dogs (my three and a friend's dog) three cats and six chickens in the house, the cats and chickens being crated in one room together. Defense is an FN-FAL, an Uzi and a suppressed AR locked and loaded and a Glock on my hip. I've got food and water for a month and my camper van has a full tank and several reserve jugs of fuel set aside. When the power goes out I move into it and use it's air conditioning. It's a diesel so it can idle forever and run the air and charging ports for the electronics. And we're expecting 2-3 weeks before the power is restored. Great fun, eh?

I'm as ready as I'm going to get and I'm tired. Bring it on and let's get this over with.

What a night!

Drove home through blowing snow that was so heavy that the highway came to a complete stop for over five minutes at one point as no one could see to move. Winds gusting fiercely now, expected to blow 50-60mph tonight. Sure am glad my plane's inside a nice hangar. As for temps, it's going to get down to -1 by morning, and with these winds and all the trees here, it's not a matter of "will the power go out?" but "WHEN will the power go out?" It's almost a given that we'll lose power sooner or later tonight, and when that occurs with these temps, I'm predicting a lot of frozen pipes across this area. As for me, I'm charging my phone and rechargeable lights, setting out lanterns, filling extra containers with water for me and the dogs, running the pellet stove at it's top settings to get the house as warm as I can, and bringing in firewood for the basement wood stove, which won't heat the rest of the house, but if need be, the dogs and I can sleep down there. And that stove WILL keep my pipes from freezing.

As for all of the aforementioned trees...just gotta hope that God keeps them off my house tonight, because that would be bad indeed in these wicked temperatures, which aren't expected to get above freezing again for days.

Of course, while some of us worry about such conditions here, the Yukon Quest is currently running across western Canada and eastern Alaska, and 17 mushers and their dogs are trekking a thousand miles in worse conditions, even sleeping outside as they run this race, which could take as long as two weeks from start to finish.

(As of this writing, Brent Sass has taken the lead from Allen Moore, and Lance Mackey needs to get it in gear if he ever wants to move up out of 13th place. Ain't no money for 13th, Lance!) Dave Dalton's in 9th, and my dogs are looking at me like I'm insane for saying that we should try this next year. "Not even in a heated car," they say.

Looks like most of the mushers are still bunched up in Dawson City for the mandatory 36-hour rest, but a few are already about as far as Eagle. Should be a good finish. Current weather in Dawson, Yukon, Canada, is 19f, or, warmer than here, and with no indicated wind. Hell, the Yukon dog-sled teams actually have better weather than I do right now!

If you're under this storm system, take care. It's no joke out there. And if when the power goes, it won't be very funny inside a lot of homes, either.

Reflections on a traffic jam

Driving home last night, I passed the flashing sign above the highway announcing a car crash ten miles ahead.

What kind of moron manages to crash their car on a same-direction, limited-access highway where everyone is going the same way at roughly the same speed? You have to be some sort of special stupid to do that, I'm thinking. But then, with nine and a half miles to go, I ran into the back-up from that crash. And with no easy way around, I was forced to sit in the back-up, inching forward and hating that inconsiderate crash driver, for over an hour.

An hour to go ten miles. To say that I was pissed doesn't begin to describe it.

Of course by that time, the problem was made worse by several secondary crashes where other people sitting in that back-up were rear-ended at incredibly low speeds but still decided to keep their cars sitting in the traffic lane--usually a middle lane--while the rest of us had to manuever around them. That stupidity made things a dozenn times worse for people trying to just get home, and my throat is still sore from yelling at them all.

If you crashed your car on I-270 in Maryland yesterday and someone drove by and called you a "Non-driving dumbass", that was me.

As I crept along at a walking pace for that hour, I was reminded of the big snowstorm here back in 2010 that trapped so many people in the city or in their cars as roads became impassable, chiefly due to other peoples' stuck and abandoned cars. This served as a reminder that those of us who commute into the big cities for work may well be making one-way trips should some major incident or catastrophe strike while we're down there. Driving out in a panic with hundreds of thousand of other people choking the roads and blocking them with crashes? Probably not going to work. Once a few roads get blocked by crashes--and they will as thousands of panickers all get behind the wheel at once--the gridlock will expand and lock the surrounding roads down within minutes. During the big snow, I actually saw people fist-fighting in gas station lines, and that was just for a heavy snowfall. What do you think that people will do when the power's all out and there's rumors (or the actual detonation of) of a dirty bomb or disease epidemic raging?

This is why I never head down into the city without at least half a tank of gas in my truck. And it's why I have a plan to get out of the city and get home that doesn't involve driving my vehicle, and a back-up plan in case that one becomes impractical. I WILL get home, even if I have to walk out, and that's why there's a pack in the back of my truck with enough supplies for three days of hiking and sleeping out. I have food, a change of clothes, a good medical kit, an empty camelbak water pouch and water filtration gear, a poncho and liner, a compass and a good map of the area between work and home. And weapons. I have no intention of being easy prey once the thin veneer of civilization cracks. My plan is simply to get home, come what may, and then bunker down and subsist off of the supplies that I've got set aside already. I won't be out looking for trouble or victimizing others, but I don't intend to BE victimized, either.

I won't go into details on my plans, but I figure that even at worst case, walking all the way from the farthest place that I routinely work, I'll be back home in 2 days. (Hopefully the dogs and/or a couple of trusted neighbors will hold down the fort until then.) But I should be able to find some mode of transportation, be it motorcycle, bicycle, horse or pogo stick, in which case, I'll be back within twenty-four hours. I constantly re-evaluate the plan, especially my egress routes, but the important thing is that I actually have a plan. A few of my friends and neighbors who also work down that way have similar pans (not surprisingly) but a number of my neighbors that I've spoken to causally do not, and it's them that I feel sorry for if the bad times do catch us all downtown. On the upside, that'll probably be fewer people coming over here to see if I've got any spare food (no, I don't) or wanting to hook into my generator.

How about you? Got a contingency plan for emergencies that catch you away from your home, assuming that your home is your chosen safe place?

Oh--and come the real emergency, since many people likely will be forced from their homes in the urban areas and since there is safety in numbers, my welcome mat will be out for those of you who know where to find me. (If you've been to one of the blogshoots here, you're probably on that list.) Just bring some groceries if you can manage it, ok?

M-16/AR-15 Lubrication Guide

While getting ready for a fast-approaching class, I found this nifty chart for M-16 and AR-15 lubrication over at ar15.com and for lack of a more original post, I figured I'd share it with those of you who own and shoot these rifles. I suspect that there are a few among my dozen or so readers.

Ready to rock on this end. But then again, every firearms owner always cleans and properly lubricates his or her weapon after every shooting session or every six months without use, right?

Power back. AAR

Power outage duration: 13.5 hrs.
External temperatures: Below freezing.

Got up this morning, went down the basement and moved the generator outside the basement door. Ran power cord upstairs and switched pellet stove over. Closed off the door leading to the library and bedrooms and the rest of the house warmed up to comfy level in in no time. Pellet stoves are great, but their only downside is that they need electricity.

Ran second line into the kitchen and restored the refrigerator/freezer, microwave and coffee maker. Made coffee and had cereal with milk for breakfast. Retired to living room to read books until power came back.


Lessons learned:

1. Keeping the generator maintained, with periodic test runs and starting fluid handy pays off. Because I have been starting it periodically and keeping the fuel lines and carburetor dry in between usages, it fired first pull of the cord, with one shot of starting fluid used to assist.

2. Paper plates and bowls. This outage caught me at the worst time kitchen-wise in that ALL of my dishware was dirty and sitting in the dishwasher, which I'd planned to run when I turned in for the night. Needless to say, they didn't get washed and I would have had jack to eat off of this morning except for the fact that I'd just re-stocked on paper plates and bowls about a month back after re-reading through one of Peter's excellent posts on Emergency Preparation and realizing that I was a bit short in this department. Thanks, Peter!
Note to self: run dishwasher more, especially if weather looks like it could knock power out.

3. Power strips. Generators are great, but if you can't get the power to the devices that need it, they're not much more than noisemakers. Today I intend to set up core power groups in each room so that the essential equipment runs through multiple-outlet power strips and the next time I need to run a generator line, I can simply route the power to those strips in each room and put most or all of the essential devices back on-line with a minimum effort.

4. Light. That propane Coleman lantern with the quartz piezoelectric ignitor that I keep sitting in the bedroom ready to go just paid for itself again. Use one emergency light to find all the other emergency lights, and I keep plenty of flashlights around the lair so I wasn't hurting at all in this department. One light in particular--a favorite of mine--uses AAA batteries and I have no spares for it. Likewise, my alarm clock's battery for the battery back-up needs to be replaced and I have no spare 9v batteries in the house. I'll remedy that today, and replace the smoke detector batteries as well, since we just had a daylight savings switchover.

5. Water. I have plenty of reserve drinking water stored, but I don't want to waste it for toilet flushing. For that purpose, I've kept ten gallons set aside in empty gallon jugs and that's enough to re-fill the toilet tank multiple times without cutting into my drinking water.

6. Know your equipment! I have a relatively new neighbor down the street just a bit who missed a day of work today because she has an electric garage door opener and she could not figure out how to get her car out this morning. (Yeah, she's another one of those people who move here from MD/NOVA because our cost of living is so much lower and then complains constantly about the state of the roads, snow plowing, police/fire response and other things that she had where she lived before because of the higher taxes that she came here to get away from.) And despite the fact that she'd been pretty standoffish and borderline rude to everyone else since she moved in here, I was nice and showed her how to disconnect the garage door from the opener so that she could get out. She also had no heat and her only light source was a few candles. She's hopeless and come the day that the power goes out for good, she'll likely never make it. Had this been an emergency requiring immediate evacuation, like a fire raging through our dry woods fanned by these high winds (started by someone using candles, no doubt), she'd have been stuck because she had no idea that the garage door could be disconnected from the power opener and opened manually.

7. Upgrade! One of these days I will have a power bus box wired to provide full house power to everything, including the well pump and hot water heater, from that generator. My "normal neighbor" down the street the other way has one set up with a propane generator that comes on automatically when the power goes out and it's sufficient to run his whole house for 2-3 weeks. Freaking nice. And sure enough, last night, his was the only house in the vicinity that was fully lit when the rest of us were blacked out. I need to set up something similar here, even if it's only a junction box that I can hook my generator into manually.

But now we're all back to normal here and I've got to take a shower once the water's hot again then go to the store for a few things. This little outage was only a minor inconvenience due to it's duration and prior planning on my part, but, as usual, it could have gone a touch better in a few areas and this one served as a good training situation for outages to come so I'm not complaining. How's you day going? Got snow? If so...Muahahahahahaha!

Prepping--Mag Pouches

One thing that I've been working on while sitting here at home has been updating and upgrading certain weapon systems to ensure that they're actually able to be used effectively should that day ever come when they're needed. (And the way that Obama and his sycophants are running our country and it's economy into the ground, that day may arrive sooner than many people think.)

As part of that program, I've been making sure that I have the needed tools and spare parts to keep certain weapons operational, and that includes making sure that each weapon that uses detachable magazines has enough magazines and carriers for those magazines. In an emergency, anyone can grab a loaded firearm and rush to the sound of the breaking glass, or bug out quickly should the situation require it. But if the only ammunition for that firearm are the rounds in the magazine that's in it, well you're not going to be effective for long should you have to play defense, or, God forbid, go on the offense.

For rifle magazines, I'm pretty much set. I've got more than enough for every rifle that I might ever need to press into service, but a review of my gear showed that I was kind of lacking when it came to modern magazine carriers for some of them. Sure, I've got some ancient ALICE gear that holds plenty of M-16 and M-14 mag pouches, but honestly this heavy, noisy and rather inflexible gear isn't what I'd want to use in the 21st century, especially not if given a chance to get better stuff. So I've been looking into more modern replacement gear, and I figure that I might as well share the fruits of my search with you folks here.

One mag carrier that I thought might make for a good "grab and go" bug-out carrier was this MOLLE-style 6 Magazine Bandoleer that the seller swore was new military surplus. It was $11.00 through Amazon and it even has an NSN stock number.

It seemed pretty well-made when I got it, has an adjustable shoulder strap and MOLLE attachment points, and it holds six magazines, two to a pocket, each with a snap closure. but you know what it doesn't do? It doesn't hold two PMAGs in each pouch. It's too tight for PMAGs, which I now use, so it's useless to me for that. If you still use standard mil-spec AR/M-16 magazines, you'll likely love this carrier. But if you use PMAGs, don't bother. I could have sent it back but I decided that I like it enough to keep it and re-purpose it for carrying Mini-14 magazines. It's currently loaded down with six of those and stacked next to my gun safe.

Also available on Amazon, this Galati Gear 8 Pocket Shoulder Magazine Pouch that holds eight SMG-type magazines, each in it's own pocket, four pockets to a side.

This one I like. It's rugged but not too heavy, has an adjustable shoulder strap and some solid fittings, and it actually was made for straight-walled magazines, not the curved MP-5 type that most people seem to make pouches for these days despite the fact that those of us with slightly more archaic weapons are in the majority.

Again, this one is perfect for those "grab and go" situations where you need to snatch something and beat it out the door. If you have an Uzi, an MP-40, a Thompson or any of the S&W M-76 variants out there, this is a great pouch to pick up. It sure beats trying to jam extra magazines into your pocket come the moment when you realize that you actually need that SMG for something besides range play.

Oh--and it's also a handy carrier for range play dates.

For pistol mags, $12.00 to MidwayUSA gets you this rugged 6 Magazine Pouch Double Stack Pistol carrier that has an adjustable shoulder strap, a fold-over flap and MOLLE attachment points.

It's pretty heavy nylon and you can't beat it for the price. I've got a few of these now because they're just so handy for keeping various magazines segregated. I mean, who among us has not gone to the range at least once and brought either the wrong magazine for your pistol or no magazine at all?

I'll review more gear as I get stuff in, and if you've got some suggestions for carrier set-ups for AR-15 and M-14 rifle mags, I'll gladly take a look.

And just to be clear, no one is paying me for these reviews and I've bought this stuff out of my own pocket. However, if someone wants to send me stuff to review, I've no problem with looking it over and giving it my honest opinion.

Snow's coming.

And we here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of eastern West Virginia tend to get hit harder than those flatlanders in Northern VA to the east or Washington, DC. Accu-hunch says we're looking at up to 19", so subtracting a bit for their typical over-estimation and then adding more due to our location on the mountainside, I figure that we're gonna get socked in pretty well over the next couple of nights.

I went to the store today, and got the requisite survival supplies, so the dogs and I are set.

What? I mean, seriously, who doesn't keep a rotating stock of foodstuffs good to last a few months? Other than the dim-bulbs in Atlanta, I mean. Dogs and I just have a few extra goodies to bunker down with, watching movies and reading books, and maybe reloading some ammo until the storm passes. (And yes, I do have more beer...and some good bourbon up in the gun room.)

Now knowing how much snow we're likely to get, coupled with the moisture in this system that promises either heavy snow or icing, I figure that we may lose power for quite some time during the storm. That being the case, I just finished running a generator test (Started on the second pull after sitting for months--damn, I love me that machine!) and I've laid out some power cords sufficient to reach from it up to my pellet stove and the kitchen, so we'll have warmth and the ability to prepare food, come what may. As a back-up to that back-up plan, I brought more wood into my basement shop for the wood stove down there. Worst case, the dogs and I will move into the shop and stay warm down there if all else fails. And I have more Coleman lanterns and stoves than I'll ever have need of, but buying them at yard sales and flea markets and rehabbing them is an obsessive hobby of mine. When I get too many, I give them away to friends in need or emergency relief organizations.

As for fuel, I just found ten gallons of gasoline next to the generator in two jugs that I'd thought were empty. +10 for having the extra fuel on hand, but -20 for not knowing it was there. It's at least six months old, probably older, and since I didn't Sta-bil it, I'm going to have to rotate it out through my jeep a few gallons at a time now.

My Jeep is parked at the bottom of my steep driveway instead of at the top, because if I need to get out fast, I want to avoid making like the Jamaican Bobsled Team by trying to negotiate that slope un-shoveled. My M-60 is also broken out and set up for when the state plow comes along and tries to shunt 30 cubic yards of packed ice and snow into my driveway within an hour of me shoveling myself clear. (I will get the bastard this year...Bet.)

So as the storm approaches you--if you haven't already been pounded or missed entirely, be careful and be ready.
And beware of photo-bombing black Shepherds in the dark.

Check your gear!

Taking a break in my gun room with the dogs tonight, I decided to check over some of my gear, just for the heck of it. In so doing, I happened to spy some Ruger Mini-14 magazines that I'd bought a year or so back, just as the big panic was setting in. (Got them at pre-panic prices, too...thanks Brownells!) These magazines, Ruger original equipment, were still in the factory packaging. And a close look at them through the clear plastic revealed that they were RUSTING inside that sealed factory packaging. Four of the six has small surface rust spots on them even though they'd never been out of the plastic.

Needless to say, all six were unwrapped. The rust spots were removed with steel wool and oil and the mags were wiped down with a handy RIG rag before being re-packaged, this time in a six-mag carrier that will be marked "Mini-14 only" to keep it from being mixed in with similar carriers containing AR mags and picked up by mistake in a non-training event should one occur. (Why couldn't Bill Ruger use AR mags...grumble, grumble...)

Moral of the story: Just because your survival gear is brand new and still in the packaging, that doesn't mean that you can forego checking it regularly just like the rest of your gear. Remember, if it's sitting, it's probably rusting or rotting. Check it and fix that stuff. And have you checked the batteries in your weapon lights lately? One of the Surefire-equipped long guns in my gun safe had batteries so flat that I'd be lucky to be able to find other batteries with it much less light up a room with it. So now as of tonight, the gun safe has a label inside the door listing the dates that batteries are changed and lights are tested.

It's little things, but come the bad times, it's those little things that just might get you.