Texas Ice Storm 2021 Lessons Learned

hello youtube this is william uh welcome to a uh another video this was gonna be a little bit different um as most of you know uh my shop is in east texas we live on sam rayburn uh lake and uh just outside of etoile texas about uh 10 miles east of etoul i guess lufkin etoil then louisiana okay so we we're pretty close to the louisiana border but anyway we have just gotten through a um the blizzard of 2021 and i thought maybe i would share um some of what i learned through this and um kind of help you guys with your preps now i know that we have been there's been a lot of uh chuckling and ribbing from our northern brothers but just kind of give you an idea texas is not equipped for this type of weather i mean we don't have the the snow plows the salt machines we don't we don't have a matter of fact our our water lines are not buried deep enough for this type of temperature so our water lines was breaking we don't have the right clothing i mean that was another lesson that i learned i mean i don't even have a pair of insulated coveralls i do have a pair of woolen long johns that was used quite excessively i might add and i i'm going to definitely get another pair but uh i mean we just don't have the clothing for this and when you hear of something like this coming there's no time to prep okay um so some of the things that i think that that everybody should be prepared for is the the unexpected and i know that's that's a difficult thing to do but we have to play different scenarios in our mind and be prepared for that now i live in an area that we get hurricanes we get a lot of the spring and summer storms and and uh tornadoes and things like that so we're very prepared for that um but an ice storm uh the last time we had an ice storm that was anywhere near this and this was a record storm i mean i don't know of anything like this that's ever happened but the closest thing that happened was about 30 something years ago and so it's kind of hard to prepare uh from 30 years to 30 years uh and especially a lot of the younger folks i mean they never witness anything like this in texas so i i think that um let me just share what what um helped us and of course i mean the wood heater uh i have one at mom and dad's house which is next door to me i don't have one in my house my house is so well insulated even we was without power for almost 20 hours which is phenomenal because i mean there's there's people that's been without power since no uh since monday so that's five or six days now uh without power so i mean trying to get enough supplies for that is just phenomenal i talked to my brother yesterday he's been without power for um since monday and he was trying to to find lp gas um because um he had enough gas at the house but he he was using his rv for some other things and so he both of his uh his tanks in his rv was completely gone and so they went to try to get some gas and of course everybody's out and um it's just it's one of those things that even milk uh for the grand his grandkids they were trying to get milk and we had an extra gallon but they found some before they needed that but uh you know it's it's it's difficult to get it and he was he was having to go 100 miles south to find supplies so i mean just as simple things like a full tank of gas extra gas cans for generators and you know you try to get prepared but how long do you prepare for two days three days in this case it's a week during hurricane season it could be two to three weeks without power okay so just an ice storm like this and i'll insert some pictures here to kind of give you an idea what happened here at my house was it started snowing monday and you'll see a picture here in my shop with a little bit of snow on the ground i mean we only got i think a couple three inches i mean it wasn't much um and then it just the temperatures just plummeted we got down to nine and i know for some of my northern neighbors that's that's kind of uh laughable but for us i mean we're not used to that we don't have the clothing for that our houses are not designed to withstand that um so you know it took some it took some planning and pipes had to make sure pipes were out leave water running drain lines where we could that type of thing and then uh i mean they we had uh wind chills down in the below zero which is completely unheard of around here and then after that thursday we started getting ice freezing rain sleet then the trees started accumulating ice and when that happens the trees start breaking um power lines go down from weight and it just makes things worse and you can't drive on it i don't care how many wheels you have pulling on ice it just doesn't work so you better have the supplies that you need on hand at that point and wait for things to thaw out because like i said we don't have the equipment to clear roads so then it's just a matter of waiting and using the supplies that you have and hope you have enough make sure that you have enough water make sure the water is not going to freeze i mean just a lot of things that that many people take for granted one thing that that some equipment that we were very thankful to have and one of those other than just generators is these little battery packs from jackery and i have this one is the medium i think it's the 500 but uh this one it um we i use this one quite a bit and i have a thousand what one that um i let my parents use for for medical equipment and it's a lifesaver it truly is a lifesaver and i highly recommend getting you some some type of battery pack like this and keep them charged um this one right now i just recharged it it's setting it a 100 again and i'll keep an eye on it make sure that it stays charged for emergencies because i mean you could plug in um electrical equipment like heating pads and things like that and oxygen machines and all kinds of stuff that you may need in for the elderly uh so even a fan during the summer you have a power outage for a hurricane you plug fans in these things uh plug in the thousand watt will run a small refrigerator so um you know it's just little things like that that you need to have standby just in case so i highly recommend this jackfruit did very well uh like i said the thousand watt and the uh i think it's a thousand and i think this one's a 500. uh so i highly recommend these there's other brands out there that i'm not familiar with but these i know work very well so you know they're kind of pricey but again how much is your is is if you need it how much is that worth like i said if you have my electrical medical equipment then this is a must-have especially the thousand um this one i don't know if it runs medical equipment or not but i know the thousand one okay so that was a a very good investment having enough wood for your wood stoves having a wood stove installed in your house i know there's there's a lot of homes in texas now that does not have a wood burning uh type of stove in them and this just proves the point that yeah although you may not need it for several years when you do need it you need it so um trying to trying to to to have enough wood and i got a quart of wood uh at the first of the season just for the shot and then of course mom and dad they they didn't use theirs until now so we've been kind of rationing our wood stockpile and i've have another two cards ordered but again supplies are very low right now so you have to plan ahead there will be at least two to three quarts of wood next year now even though we'd be better prepared next year it may not happen for another 30 years and this may and again this may be something that happens every year now because people are keep saying climate change climate change climate change well yeah the climate's been changing for a million years even before mankind's footprint hit the earth it was changing so climate change is always happening now are we going into another ice age who knows who knows but i do know that we will be prepared if this thing happens again next year we will have more wood we'll make sure that i have another thousand one of these little lithium battery packs i'll get another thousand just for a backup to the backup uh our generators work very well we had plenty of fuel for that um thankfully it because the temperatures were so cold we didn't have to to plug in our freezers because our freezers was kind of out in the in different areas that got to stay cold now we did the refrigerator stuff in the house we put out on the porch just because the refrigerator in the house was was warming up but the milk and stuff we put out on the porch and it was fine but just little things like that clothing make sure you have adequate clothing for it for a situation like this keep your your gas tanks full be mentally prepared for something like this because um games i mean if you have family you're going to want some board games and things like that with power outage things to keep your mind occupied um anything that is going to help your situation just think about that medication and the list could go on and on and on and each individual each family is different but i think i hope that this this situation actually made some people consider and think about their preps and how adequate or inadequate their preps were where they can be improved upon we need to use this one thing that i do want to say is you cannot depend on someone else to come and save you okay this is another thing that that should have been learned in this situation we did not have adequate power for whatever reason whether we depended too much on green energy which is one one scenario uh whether our energy was sold somewhere else and we did not uh have adequate preps on our energy equipment i mean there's a lot of scenarios uh fema was not here so i mean you cannot depend on someone else it is up to you you individually um don't depend on other people because they will let you down every time okay don't make government entities now your your fellow man i you know for the most part 90 of people are willing to to give the shirt off their back and um i mean that that is another thing that i have seen through social media is people willing to help other people but do not depend on a government agency to come and save you because that's not going to happen it will not happen okay you're you're going to have to prepare and and make sure that you're adequately have equipment and and supplies to make it through whatever scenario comes up okay so um everything is fine we're warming up again spring is around the corner uh but i i do hope that everybody understands learn from texas because it can happen anywhere and it could be any type of situation it could be floods it could be tornadoes it could be hurricanes it could be volcanoes i mean there's a volcanoes coming active that hasn't been that's been dormant for thousands of years so i mean you never know what's around the corner so having to build some food stock stock back having water stock back that's protected having plenty of wood enough heat to cook your food to keep you warm a shelter roof over your head i mean just simple things like that that you need to be very conscious of and not depend on other uh agencies to save you okay um so anyway i hope you guys take this with the with a little bit of a grain of salt and and it helps you in your your future planning because you know the way things are going this may not be a rare thing anymore we may be having more storms we may be having more disasters and things like that that we as a human race need to be prepared for and anyway enough of my rambling i hope i hope you guys got something out of this and um until the next one you guys get in the backyard we're gonna stick be sure to take a child with you to get the opportunity keep that tired about all these uh these things and why are we doing them because it's it could get uh like i said a lot could prepare nationally to get worse so let's hope and pray not but uh let's be prepared just in case so until the next one keep those uh plenty of eyes and band-aids handy and we'll catch you guys again very soon bye

Channel: William Collins

Views: 32,376

Rating: 4.894587 out of 5

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Id: FwYayOcTy9E

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021