Hello, everyone. If you will recall, I wrote a post on How to Prepare Your Reptiles and Other Pets for an Emergency Situation right before Hurricane Sandy. Now that the storm is over, power is back and life is returning to normal (at least where I live), I wanted to let you know how everything went.
We were without power, internet, and cell phone service for 8 days. As mentioned in the original post, we have a generator that could support up to 4,000 watts of usage. We had the hot hands packages and the boxes for the animals set up. We also had baby blankets in case we needed them to wrap hot hands or provide some cushion for the animals, masking tape to seal their bins, extension cords to run all around the house, a space heater for heat, etc.
It turns out that we were well-prepared for the storm but there were some things that we did not expect. Our lessons learned are as follows:
1) If the authorities say that you might be without power for a long time, say 7-10 days, plan to be without power for 10 days. This is something that we never really thought would happen and therefore, we only had a few small gas cans. As you may have heard, areas hit by Sandy had gas shortages due to power outages and impassibility on the roads. If I had to do it all over again, I’d buy about 5-10 10 gallon gas cans and fill them up before the storm. Chris and I ended up going out every day spending hours looking for gas. We’d get in a long line at a station and they’d run out and we’d have to go to the next place. It was horrible and cold. Eventually Chris found a Napa Auto Parts that still had gas cans for sale. We were able to pick up another gas can but we still had to go out. When the weather is cold and you have pets, plan on running your space heater in a small, enclosed room 24/7. We were going through about 5 gallons per 8-10 hours with a Champion generator.
2) As noted above, we ended up not being able to use much of our house because it was so cold. The animals were confined to the tubs in our small bedroom with the space heater and hot hands. Each day we would try to run cords to individual enclosures to give proper UVB. However, our animals were more stressed out than we expected and some of them stopped eating, despite having their heat bulbs. The rest of the house was so cold that it was reducing the ambient temperatures in their enclosures regardless. There is nothing that I can really suggest here other than if you think you will be without power for more than a week, bring your pets with you to a place that will not be affected.
3) The hot hands worked really well but here are a few issues that came up. One, they are too hot to the touch so they had to be wrapped with a baby blanket. Some bins needed 2+ hot hands and some needed one. You had to be really careful not to burn your animal, overheat them, or to cause them to freeze. Chris and I found ourselves continuously checking their bins at all hours to ensure that they were not at risk of dying. We had our temp gun out at all times. Another thing that came up is that they caused condensation on the inside of the bins. We had to keep wiping up the humidity for animals that need drier conditions. Additionally, they only lasted 10 hours at most and therefore we ended up going through 2.5 boxes in an 8 day period. Here’s the thing: we only had one box! We never thought we’d even have to open them! Fortunately the store we bought them from opened up after a couple days and we were able to buy two more 80 pack boxes. That was a life-saver.
Here is a pic from the first night without power when we were downstairs waiting for the storm to be over because we thought a tree might land on our house. These aren’t all the bins. Sorry for the image quality and the mess haha.
Animals in Bins During the Storm- Part of Our Emergency Plan
4) We did not have to tap into the canned foods but I still suggest having them available. We were able to keep a supply of fresh greens with limited stores that opened up.
5) We should have stocked up on firewood before the storm. It gets really suffocating staying in the same room all the time. We used the fireplace a few times with the little bit of wood we had but it was limited. We still could only stay close to the fireplace and couldn’t move around the house much because it was freezing.
6) As noted above, we had to go to gas stations several times. Many gas stations could not take debit cards and some could not take credit cards. As a result, cash was required. We spent about $300 on gas over the 8 days. Plan to have some solid cash on hand to survive.
7) The firewood and space heaters cause the air to dry out. However, the hot hands cause condensation to build up in the bins. This constant going back and forth almost got Surya the sailfin dragon sick. She started getting this wheezing sound, almost like she was coming down with a respiratory infection. Thankfully we were able to provide her humidifier with the generator and could give her a hot steam bath because we had hot water. Many people I know didn’t even have hot water. This is just something to consider…if your animals are without their ideal conditions for too long, they are going to go down hill. The good news is that after a few days she was back to normal.
8) While the batteries and candles proved to be absolutely necessary, a battery powered satellite radio would have been nice. Listening to the news is absolutely necessary because you need to know what is going on around you and what is going to happen. A few times we used the generator to connect to an electric powered radio and that is how we found out how bad things are and what the gas situation was, etc.
Okay, on to what I learned about other people’s situations. Many people’s houses flooded out and the storm surge became very real. Further, massive fires were spawned by burning embers that were forced into other people’s houses by the hurricane winds. People died that could have evacuated.
If you are in an evacuation zone and you have pets, you really should go. Go to a family member or friend’s house out of harm’s way if possible because some shelters don’t take pets. Further, it’s going to be really difficult to grab all your lizards and get rescued in a flood. If you live on the shore, unfortunately, really consider that you are going to lose everything. I mean, this is the same thing if it is some other type of pending disaster, like a wild fire. If you can’t leave your home, at least try to get someone to foster your animals for a week or two and then make arrangements after things start to become more clear after the storm. I really hate to think of all the animals that were displaced or killed in the storm because they were left behind. I don’t want to think about that.
I think it’s important if you aren’t in the line of danger but have friends and family who are, to consider that you should support these people and consider taking in their pets for a couple weeks before the disaster strikes. You could be a life saver.
…and to lighten the mood, now that the storm is over and the power and heat is back on at my house, the kids are very happy. Iggy is happy to have his couch seat back too:
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Surya the Sailfin’s Enclosure
Ash
Chris
