WOW The Middle Of September And No Hurricanes!

Prepper Hints

Healthy folks can survive with minimum assistance. We unhealthy folk need some babysitting. I just changed the circuit board in my BiPAP and had a miserable three month life of utter exhaustion until I could fix it.

A 10-amp solar panel and a battery can work wonders for extended power outages. Many folks have never had to deal with power issues in Mexico but when they are serious there isn't anything funny about them.

Unless you want a totally sealed battery Mexican RV batteries are available and a lot less of a hassle to haul. Yes, a rig has a generator and alternator, plus a battery bank, etc.

But sometimes things don't pan out as advertised. A solar panel can keep your bacon out of the fire. There are some newer foldable models.

Used excellent shape batteries are like a unicorn. I have purchased three new batteries and then after several months sold them at a $20 "loss" People snap them up like hotcakes. Make sure you have the sales receipt for proof of guarantee.

Side trips in the toad is a prime area to take along an extra battery. From jump starting to assisted breathing and a hotel room light an extra battery is priceless. Toting a battery makes a totally sealed AGM battery especially attractive. And unless an AGM battery is old, many fellow RV'ers will jump at a chance to buy yours. Battery problems down here are as common as dental cavities in the world of Willie Wonka.

GordonThree wrote:
Ya know, I've never had a hurricane here in Michigan. What's all the hubbub about?

While Hurricane Hazel's eye didn't quite make it as far west as Michigan in 1954, Ontario (and Toronto) suffered substantial damage and deaths. If you look at the track of Hazel it was similar to the one that presently coming!

Never had a tornado here in Michoacan but I damned sure know what all the hubbub is about. With the earth burping, climates are going to change whether we like it or not.

It's like a gigantic forest fire advancing. No one is talking about prepping for changes, they're all busy pointing fingers and asking who uses matches. Be smart shun the latter and join the former. I'm trying to get the ejido to drill our well depth deeper from 8 meters to 50 meters then use a jet pump assist.

The Harbor Freight, 800 watt 2-cycle generator can start and run a good size 16 cubic foot refrigerator or power a 40 amp Megawatt battery charger power supply. It runs 5 hours on a quart of gasoline and 50-1 2 cycle oil. This can be one heck of a handy thing to have if power goes out and roads are closed.

BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE of buying sensitive perishable items if power is lost for a day. Especially vulnerable is chicken, chilled cebiche, salads, and seafood. I go vegetarian if away from home where stuff is maintained via generator if necessary. The HF 2-cycle does a fine job keeping freezer contents at the beach hard frozen.

RV generators suck fuel like a high school football team chomps hamburgers. Coupled with inferior converters to charge too small a battery bank, traditional RV setups fend pathetic with extended power outages. Luckily, vulnerable Pacific coast resort cities like San Carlos / Guaymas, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo have nearby power plants. I have no idea where Zihuatanejo's power originates / Acapulco? My pueblo is 50 miles away from the Rio Balsas / Lazaro Cardenas plant and it is vulnerable. Even though chocolate brownouts and outages have become less common I have no illusions what a category 2 and higher hurricane can do. The thing is, roads are closed, you cannot just raise the jacks and flee.

But summer along the tropical coast is 100 times more beautiful than winter. It's like the difference between Rocky Mountain summer and winter. The stores and outdoor markets are flooded with fruit, the senses are overwhelmed with tropical flower aroma, and restaurants actually have tables by the windows and no waiting line.

Give it time; still lots of time. October 1983 floods in Arizona were from a Mexico West Coast Hurricane that spent nearly two weeks over AZ. Our house had a 1 1/2 feet of flood water inside! Wall now completely around property. Maybe just a late season in the Eastern Pacific!

rocmoc n AZ

Tornados are hard to predict and form pretty fast, the destruction is enormous but in a rether confined area or path, tornado weather prediction is getting better and the warnings are comming in time to seek shelter, earthquakes are unpredictable and happen suddenly, depending on the location and type of movements, flowing magma, subduction plate, slip fault and depth of the event, buildings will colapse and man made structures as well as mountain sides sliding down cause damage not only to the structures but the infrastructure, the example is the Northridge quake in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, fiers were started when the gas mains ruptured and the gas under pressure ignited and torched houses with the ocupants still inside, and of course some teluric movements genate tsunamis, one devastated Banda Aceh.

A hurricane is predictable thanks to the hurricane hunters from the US Airforce and the meteorologists from NOAA, although a hurricane is prectable and land fall is generally known, with the initial rain flooding starts, and as the storm moves towards land there is the wind that gradually increases in speed and intensity, the storm surge follows and that can tear down buildings together with the wind, remember the apartment building in Florida, it was there before the hurricane and only the slab was left after the hurricane, I do not remember if they ever found the idiots that did not evacuate.

Tornados can happen anywere if the atmosferic conditions are there, yes they are confined to the tornado alley so far, earthquakes can happen anywhere in the world, not just in certain areas, not just in the Pacific Coast you have the New Madrid fault that runs up from the Gulf of Mexico to I believe Canada and there is a fault under New York City.

Mother natures power is awsome and with global warming the storm's just might get bigger and stronger, unless the ocean currents flip and we get an ice age.

Best to have an emergency plan, either a good evacuation plan and route or if need to hunker down, food and water for at least a week or more sometimes it takes longer to get food in to places, MRE's are better than freeze dried since they requiere water and that comodity can become scarese and water being delivered were needed in time can take long, you need to be self sufficient you might have to shelter with a few wild animals also, not just the neighbor from Michigan.

lol, navegator

I like to take a moment and remind myself that Fukushima grade walls of water and paint-shaker magnitudes of earth tremors have to be kept in perspective.

Mexico is 3/5ths the size of the United States, and has I would believe a population equal to all the people living west of the Mississippi.

So tales of destruction in Mexico can be compared eyeball-to-eyeball with tales of destruction in the USA.

Afraid to drive the San Francisco Bay bridge because of visions of the quake of 1989?

Or park in Las Vegas in the Mandalay Bay lot?

Or visit downtown Manhattan?

It's exactly the same perspective.

What causes me to stay on my toes, are low awnings, terrible sidewalks, wet cobblestones, freshly mopped mirror glazed floor tile, sloppily maintained (and driven) big rigs, and drivers who are in a hurry to get nowhere in record time.

Prepping for natural disasters can take a lot out of the bite of discomfort, but frankly getting bit by a battalion of no-seem-ums is infinitely worse than getting awakened in the middle of the night temblor.

And to be utterly blunt about it, I would rather face a dozen crooked Mexican traffic cops versus one sharp eyed California Highway patrolman that happened to see my careless kissing of a double yellow line by my tire.

I grew up in Kansas and had 4 near misses, could see the Tornado but outran two crossing our path and the other two raised when they hit the river South of town. We had many other warnings, town siren but nothing appeared. Even in the 50s we knew what conditions it took for a Tornado and was on guard when they existed. Spent many an hour in the basement at home and at school. Maybe the difference was we did not have the Weather Stations to rely on so were extra cautious where today people are waiting for the warning from the powers to be! PLUS luck!

rocmoc n AZ

I agree that so many people don't understand natural disasters, Mother Nature being upset, climate change, whatever.

In February, in the middle of the dry season here, little fires started. It's natural, it's nature. One of the condo complexes, Casa que ve al Mar, which is largely weekly rentals, had a very small, very slow moving, natural burn happening within sight of them. Friends told us that the majority of the visitors decided that until they were "evacuated" they had nothing to worry about.

Sorry, but what happened to taking care of yourself and making your own decisions, like when you were a kid? It's interesting.

Who is going to "evacuate" them, and to where?

There are some folks in evacuation areas that either do not have the means to evacuate or they go into a state of mental disconect from fear and do not react or do not understand the danger, unfortunatly as rocmoc states pople are waiting for someone "with autority" be it via a cmmunications device or Law Enforcement to tell them what to do and were to go, it seems that the more gadgets they use the less they use the brains and I will leave it at that!

navegator

Ah, but it's Mexico! Why would you expect to not have to make a decision on your own?

Worse yet, expect someone else to make the decision for you and then take care of you???