jym626

Glad things are improving in your neck of the woods, mom60. And Binx, glad the horn will be safe!

If you have room for things like a hat, sunglasses, bug spray or suntan lotion, they might be helpful if you have to be outside for any length of time.
And I agree, the first thing that should be evacuated is that pesky houseguest!

mathmom

It's good to have a non-cordless telephone for when the electricity goes out. The only battery powered radios we have are the cars, but they'd do in a pinch.

Regarding photos I keep negatives in our safe deposit box, but haven't made a DVD with the digital ones - probably should.

mom60

A co-worker just experienced this problem with her elderly mother. The Mom had her car in the garage with her cell phone in the car. Power goes out. Mom's home phone needs electricity. D can not reach her mother. Mom's area is being evacuated and my co-worker can not reach her Mom. Mom can not get her car out since the garage has no entrance aside from the garage door. The garage has no people door. Her Mom was able to get a ride out with a neighbor but as soon as the power went back on and her area went from mandatory to warning the car came out of the garage and is sitting in the driveway.
Not sure what anyone can do if their garage only has one opening. Not have an electric opener?
The real test is that now that the danger is passing making sure we are prepared for the next emergency.

jym626

mom60-
There s usually (or should I say there is supposed to be) an emergency "pull string" on the garage door opener that lets you manually open the garage door. It should "unlock" the metal arm at the top (it is on a hinge, usually) that then allows you to open the door. It would be an obvious safety issue without that.

mom60

jym626 You have to be able to get inside the garage to release the safety. She could not get inside her garage since it had no door aside from the large garage door.
Our first house had no door to the garage but it was not an issue since he garage door was manual.

jym626

Ahh-- I was under the impression that she was INSIDE the garage, and could get in/out of her house, just not get the car out fo the garage. I am guessing you are saying that it was a freestanding building not attached to the house. I was thinking of the times our power has gone out. I could get back in my house, but had trouble with the garage door for the car ( we have no "people" door to the outside of the garage from the garage either).

aibarr

I get worried about DVDs degrading over time. Some of the higher-end photo sharing sites (I prefer SmugMug) make monthly backup tapes of your uploaded digital photos and keep them in multiple geographic locations. I pay $40 a year, and I've kept all our photos online since I got my camera. Wedding and honeymoon photos (full files, non-compressed) are up there, and I have the peace of mind of knowing that they won't be lost to a disaster. We periodically burn DVDs of our laptop contents and keep them with passports and important docs in a fireproof safe.

I also use gmail as both an e-mail provider and as a searchable extension of my brain. All my address book items are in there somewhere.

Nikara

Yay- a topic on my field of interest. A few things that haven't been mentioned yet:

TEXT MESSAGE!!! This is the piece of information that I feel needs to be shared with everyone. Text messaging will often work in a disaster even if calling on your cell phone won't work. You could text during September 11th, you could text during Hurricane Katrina. Since far less data is being sent, texts can get through when calls can't. Everyone should at least know how to send and receive a simple text. I know I had to teach my parents in case of an emergency.

If you live in earthquake country (like me) be aware of the fact that emergency officials are now telling people to be ready for two weeks on their own, instead of the typical 3 days that were publicized earlier. Food, water, medication, medical supplies etc. The red cross has great information on making proper kits.

ucsd_ucla_dad

mom60:

It seems that your co-worker should check into what it would cost to cut a door into that garage. Maybe there's no code there requiring a door to be in the garage but as this illustrates, it'd be a good idea to have one. There are 'extra skinny' (24") doors available that should be fairly easy to install.
Otherwise, maybe she should either not use the opener and do it by hand (could be a problem for an elderly lady) or not use the garage.

Although openers are supposed to have the pull cord to manually disengage the door so the door can be manually pushed open, I think there are lots of people who have no idea about the cord and wouldn't know how to use it. It's a good thing to review. I've had to use mine several times when power's gone out.

ebeeeee

I'm also wondering if the co-workers mom is strong enough to pull the door open with the cord.... (or tall enough).
It does seem odd that there is no people door to that garage. There should be. In case of an emergency, you could get in the people door and get a neighbor or someone to pull the cord if need be.

jym626

ebeee-
I thought about that too-- since I once had to sort of stand on the edge of the doorframe of my car to reach the pullstring for the garage emergency opener. The door itself is on springs, so opening and closing it wasn't that big a deal-- it wasn't that "heavy" since it was sorta spring loaded.

violadad

mom60, Have your co-worker check to have a door cut in as suggested. If there is an existing window in the garage, it might be easier for the contractor to pull the window, and enlarge the existing opening for the new door. She might get lucky, if the window height and width is within the door rough opening parameters, it might minimize framing, the existing header above the window may even be utilized.

If I'm not mistaken, current code requires an egress door as well as the overhead even if the garage is not attached to the main house.

teriwtt

While this doesn't count as an emergency, speaking of weather though, I am watching the most incredible lightning show right now... the kind where there's not any thunder yet because the storm is still a ways away, but I cannot count to more than three without the sky lighting up. It looks like a fireworks finale going off in the distance.

notre dame AL

Mom60-you are in our thoughts. We are praying for the safety of everyone out there.