How I survived hurricane Florence in a town that was flooded out

Well on the 10th of September my girl put 2 cases of 20 bottles of water in freezer and froze them.
On September 11th when my check came in I went to stores for supplies I found very little most of the CANNED MEATS were gone water was almost gone no batteries or flashlights were in any stores but Wal-Mart had in Halloween section bags of lightsticks for 5 dollar a pack of 25 I bought 6 bags of them .So I got some hamburger and a pack of ribs and froze them . Luckily I already had some POTTED MEATS in pantry and I got a big bag of potatoes

Sep 12 I sent my gr8 to her mom's place because she at the time was very pregnant and my town has a history of flooding and I did not want her stuck in it. I had to stay because my mother refused to leave and I can not leave my mom by herself. So I spent that day gathering loose stuff in yard and securing outside building

Sep 13th the storm started getting intense about 8 pm and knocked out lights went to bed early

Sep 14th storm still howling during day time I walked out in it to see a hundred ft tall oak tree fell in back yard and gf trailer had a fist sized hole in roof.

Sep15th river starting to rise bridge has started to wash out but still open nobody has any news even town mayor is lost he says and I quote I haven't heard from state or county officials since before storm

Sep 16th bridge closed by dot but fools still driving across it because they watched a highway patrol guy drive his new charger thru it even as waters coming over his hood
Sep 16 town is cut off only place to get supplies that we can get too is by driving a 100 miles away and none of the towns on that route have gas because no electricity been cooking stuff out of freezer on charcoal grill but charcoal running out
People in low parts of town are evacuated by nd state wildlife boats and army guys with big trucks from fort brag no deputies in area because county seat under 15 feet of water

Sep 17 army says whole town may have to evacuate as water is starting to encircle whole town people with generators are starting to run out of glass local convenience store is open but cash only and man is price gouging his stuff 4 small cans of Vienna sausage and a 6 pack of POTTED MEAT coast me 12 bucks no sign of red cross .
Sep 18th local fire department has generator and a gas stove and has started cooking meals for town with what ever supplies they can find.

Sep 19th guy who works at local landscapers goes thru town giving out cases of mres and gas for generators and water
Sep 20th local food pantry starts giving out meals and supplies
Sep 21st my gf comes home with the kids I have already fixed her roof and cleaned out her fridge and freezer for her
Sep22st lights finally come back on but still stuck in town because only place with gas is still 30 miles away and we do not know if they will have it when we get there.
Sep 23rd things are still rough going but getting better me and girl and a few others start running people outta town for groceries when I am not doing that I am helping people who can't go get supplies by fetching them for them by wagon while I quietly cuss aholes with John Deere utility trucks who ride around town looking for news crews to get face on fox news instead of putting it to use making supply runs.

By and large it was an experience I will not soon forget and plan to be better prepared for next time by and large the people came tighter and took care of one another till help arrived no thanks to town officials who were clueless during whole event.

Special thanks to pollocksville fire department ,the soldiers of ft brag , the coast guard river rescue guys out of tennesse,the nd wildlife and the national guard. Local law enforcement helped a little but as I said county seat was up river from us and their whole town was underwater so their absence is totally understandable.

a reply to: proteus33

Thanks for the information.
Glad you and yours are ok.

Thanks for posting your experiences. Glad to know that all went well.


I'd like to suggest that stocking up on supplies that don't don't need 'cooking' as much as maybe hydrating and heating. If you don't preserve your own foods, here are some suggestions.


For instance, Instant potatoes, I buy the Idahoan garlic, cheese or "loaded" flavored family packets, the original Idahoan instant potato is crappy and has an odd flavor. Usually around .89 - $1.00 a pack and feeds 4 according to package directions. I use Hungry Jack or Betty Crocker for plain instant potaotes and they come in a big box and taste great. All you need is water or liquid of choice to reconstitute and eat, doesn't even have to be hot. Top Ramen noodles. A pack of 12 is $1.50. Just heat 3min and eat. Minute rice just needs boiling for a vew minutes. Add a can of mixed veggies and grate 1/2 can of spam, (save the rest for later) or add a can of cooked chicken meat, juice and all. Throw in some soy sauce and you have a nice Chinese meal,


Here's a simple meal.

$1.00 can of veggies of choice
$3.00 can of chicken OR $2.78 can of spam, any flavor OR use no meat, whatever one desires.
.50 four packs of top ramen type noodles with seasoning packets

$4.50 average cost of total meal to feed six people @.75 ea.

This makes a filling and flavorful meal and will easily feed 5-6 people in about 10 minutes if you have a solid heat source such as a stove. It can all be heated in basically the same large pot. Instead of using water only for the noodles, add all the juice from canned products and supplement with water. Using a homemade rocket stove or a single burner butane burner takes a bit more time. I suggest everyone who can, to make a rocket stove of cans to usin in case of emergencies. It's fun and nice to have in a pinch and portable, uses twigs and leaves or pinecones as fuel source. Rocket stoves can even be made with small cans.

Another idea is a good soup such as one of Campbells hearty soups. Heat to boiling with minute rice in a large pan. The rice absorbs the liquid and you have a good solid filling meal. Or skip the rice. Soup in itself is filling and cheap.

Beans and rice. Yup, one of my favories. I cook pintos ahead of time, drain and dehydrate then package up in airtight containers. To use, Heat/cook rice and beans, add some spicy flavorings and you have a great meal.

This is just a point that stocking up for emergencies doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate and can provide diverse flavorful meals.

Glad your recovering CUZ, we were a bit more fortunate here by the triangle.

a reply to: proteus33

Sounds like you planned as well as you could and made it through. Awesome job.

Curious though, haven't you wondered why Trump allowed your town to be flooded like that yet?

sarcasm...

Me, I have loaded up the basement to feed everyone that lives here for 4 weeks. Working on water, I do have a good filter system but havent really kept a huge supply of water. Probably have enough for a week. Going to purchase a 100 gallon grey water bucket and if anything bad happens at least I will have water for as long as that lasts.

One gas generator but thinking of getting a solar one as well. Keep the old router going. Maybe a small fridge?

a reply to: proteus33

I'm glad to hear that you are ok.

As a native south floridian, we have the yearly hurricane preparedness drilled into us by our news stations.

1 gallon of water per day per person for about a week.
Clear out the yard of anything that is loose.
Enough food for your and your family for a week or two.
Fill up the tanks in your cars.
Have enough gas for your generator for a week.
etc...

With all the global warming we will probably be seeing more storms. Just be prepared and we will all be ok.

Well I had a supply of CANNED chicken breast and tunafish ,and roast beef because my gf likes the chicken for her salads and mom likes the roast beef for her hot th sandwiches and the TUNA FISH because mom's cat is spoiled but last month he learned to eat more kibble. I must say I have found more respect for our service men after I ate some of them mres the first box was terrible it was a box of low sodium mres the second box that was dropped off was from camp Lejeune and they were a thousand times better but all of it if you gonna stock pile it make sure to pack a supply of seasonings too. But hey it filled me and mom's bellies ravioli 1 was good so was the breakfast one with sausage patty. Just glad gf and kids were with her mom because it would have been to much stress on her and I did not want to have to do a homebirth with no running water or electricity I know that's common place in other parts of world but she was happy having her in Jacksonville where she could get pain meds. But truly what was shocking to me there was no information everything I found out about I had to leave home and walk around town for several hours to find out . I believe that next election for mayor I might decide to run against current one who has been doing job unopposed for 30 + years because he was sorely lacking in response to this disaster.

Funny thing is they trying to say my towns flooding was so bad was do to climate change which is horsefodder in reality they bypassing hwy 17 west around town and the new road is 40ft higher than area around it to prevent flooding of highway. Well it made a bottleneck where new road going to cross river so river piled up at that spot till it was 30 ft high and was causing current speed coming into town of 40knots which caused several buildings to be undercut and moved.

I'd recommend a solar powered mobile phone charger. Bought a couple after losing communication with my relatives while in hospital. These things are like Lithium laptop batteries with solar panels. Plop them on a window sill and they soak up the sunlight even in cloudy weather. When fully charged, they can recharge up to six mobile phones.

a reply to: StoutBroux


DO NOT, and i really do mean do not, include instant ramen noodles in any disaster preparedness, food supplies. yes they certainly are cheap. but unfortunately they are also worthless for anything other than filling your belly up so that you don't feel hungry. that comes from personal experience from when i was without income and trying to stretch my remaining money out. since ramen was so cheap, that is what i had been eating for a week or so. a friend knowing my situation (that i was stuck at home recovering from an injury) took me out to a party to get me out of the house, where i promptly started passing out. a couple friends who are nurses quizzed me about what i had been eating when i regained consciousness. and rather freaked out that i had been eating only ramen noodles. i then got a lecture about the fact that there are almost no needed nutrients in them. and that the reason i was passing out was because i had quite literally been starving myself by eating them, and how i could have easily died as a result.

in a disaster situation you want to have the exact opposite of things like ramen noodles. if anything you want food that is packed with nutrients. since you want to be at your peak. you are likely going to be burning off even more energy than normal as you work to cope with the disaster.

(somehow when i pushed enter to start a new paragraph, it posted??)

and yet again we are seeing in the OP a critical problem that is easily and even cheaply fixed. and yet has been alllowed to contine to be an issue all over North America. and i suspect in most "rich" nations. we have continued to fail to learn throgh many years of disaster, and refused to put into place the very simple and cheap fix to the problem. that problem being the inability to get fuel without power. which also meas the inability to use much of the equipment that would be helpful to bring in and distribute supplies easily, rescue of people. as well as to start dealing with the cleanup needed after such storms. which means more people suffering needlessly for longer periods of time than needs to be. and this actually puts "poor" nations far ahead of places like the US in terms of disaster survival and recovery. in "poorer" nations most if not all gas pumps are built so that if the power goes out, they just pop on the manual pump wheel onto the gas pumps. and in seconds the gas is flowing again. and since there is gas available. some of that gas can be used to bring even more gas in as needed. they could even have cheap hand pumps on site that could be fed into the tanks to pump gas. sadly what i suspect it would take to fix the situation is for everyone who has had someone die or otherwise injued/suffered due to the lack of electricity after storms and power outages, where there was a generator, but it had no fuel or ran out of fuel. or could not be rescued because the equipment that could have been used top help them was out of fuel. to class action sue the hell out of the oil companies for causing preventable deaths. there quite literally is no excuse at all for not being able to get fuel without electricity.

another area where poorer countries are much further ahead in regaurds to disaster than "rich" countries is also seen in the OP. the inability to cook. with both most stoves being electric in the first place. and then the gas stoves being reliant on gas lines (which can both be damaged by the disaster, as well as likely need electricity to distribute that fuel). in many poorer nation not only are gas stoves the norm (provided they don't just cook on wood or coal all the time). but ther are no gas lines to wory about (and that includes no hazzards of broken gas lines creeating fire and explosions). everyone that has a gas stove has a tank (and likely 2 or 3) which in north america we use just for BBQ's. no power, no problem, you can still cook the same way on the same stove you use everyday. and those tanks (i think the one we use is about a 30lb tank, just slightly bigger than the standard BBQ propain tank in the US), can run the stove quite literally for weeks, over a month. and while there are electric stoves. most of them are actually dual power. where you have both electric and gas burners. so if the power goes out, you still have the gas to use. and in all honesty even if you run out of propain or whatever gas, you just get it filled up. because yet again the fuel is still available even without electricity.

a reply to: generik

While you make some good points about fuel, I think you are missing an important detail. The loss of power isn't nearly as much of a problem as is the fact that in flooded areas fuel tanks are likely under water thus contaminating the fuel. Worse, fuel is less dense than water, so the water displaces the fuel in the tanks. In other words, the fuel goes out of the tanks and is replaced by water. All the manual pumps in the world aren't going to help you if you're just pumping fuel contaminated water out of the tanks.

Now, if tanks were above ground this problem might be mitigated somewhat, but federal and local regulations prohibit this for safety reasons. However, in non-flooded areas your point would be valid.

a reply to: proteus33

Great account of your experience! Thanks for posting!

So what did you learn from the experience?

You definitely should now spend some time to sit down with your entire family and write down some "Lessons Learned". Do this while everything is still fresh in your minds, the little details matter (and these are the ones you forget later).

We don't live in a hurricane area, but we do live in a very remote area and have to be far more self sufficient than most. As a general rule we are completely self reliant for 2-3 months of pretty comfortable living without any outside world support. When I say 'pretty comfortable' I mean there wouldn't really be any noticeable difference in lifestyle. We'd have power, eat normally and recreate how we normally do. After that period we probably would have to work quite a bit harder at it, but could very well go for a couple years if we really had to.

Lastly, a few observations based on what you wrote and the comments of others...

Beans - Beans are a great emergency stock item. They're high in protein and you can do about anything with them. Dried beans take up quite a bit of water and require a fair amount of fuel to cook. However, canned beans like pintos, great northerns and many others are super inexpensive, have a long shelf life and will spread tasty ingredients out over a much longer time frame. You might consider stocking up on beans.

Potted / preserved meats - These things are tasty in a pinch, but most of them are loaded with sodium and fat. Obviously, in an emergency you're not too worried about your figure so the fat isn't too big of a deal, but the sodium can be. People with pre-existing health issues like high blood pressure may have issues, plus the salt will cause many to retain water. Not pounding on the 'nutrition' drum here, but just cautioning against an all-spam diet in an emergency scenario. Just balance things out with other food stuffs.

Ramen - Yeah, this stuff isn't really good for emergency stores. It's packed with tons of sodium and lacks any real calories to burn as fuel. "Some" is okay, maybe as a filler, but it shouldn't be the focal point of an emergency plan. Plus, it uses up quite a bit of water for what you get out of it (which isn't much).

Oats / Rice - Something you might consider is stocking up on some dried oats, either in the steel cut variety or the rolled variety. Oats are super high in nutrients like soluble fiber, iron and protein for energy and stamina. In fact, oats are one of the top 10 'super foods'. They do require some water and fuel to cook, but the bang for your buck here is way higher than say something like ramen noodles. Plus they can be used for both sweet and savory dishes, so they're not just a breakfast thing at all. Similar things for rice also. However, rice is not nearly as nutritious as oats, but the trade off here is rice doesn't require a whole lot of water to cook. Again, balance is key.

Light sources - A lot of people get freaked out about not having light to see at night, and you do need 'some'. However, if you set your mind to thinking you won't always have light 100% of the time you'd actually be surprised how well you can see in all but complete pitch black darkness. This mindset will help you conserve things like batteries, lantern fuel and candles. Plus, if you work your schedule around doing the things you need to do when it's daylight, and sleeping when it's dark, then you don't really need a lot of supplemental light.

Just some thoughts.