How to prepare for blackouts

[Erica56]

I’ve read on the news today that we should be preparing for blackouts between 4-7pm in January / February. How is everyone preparing?

Torches, charge phones in advance, wrap up warmly. Keep the freezer shut.

DH will love making cups of tea and heating soup on a camping stove in the garden. I appreciate that's not for everyone but I expect we'll stockpile hot chocolate etc and invite the neighbours round.

Unfortunately it will affect my business as I see some of my clients during that time. All that rescheduling will keep me busy.

Bit worried about the freezer. Not worth stocking it up at all now is it!?

It's only three hours, your freezer will be fine.

Which Tory donor chum has the candle/battery factory?

Mentally try and keep your panic at bay. Imagine if one afternoon you had it off and decided to have a relaxing evening off from everything.no cooking or cleaning tv off snuggled on the sofa with a book.
I no that sounds daft and im am NOT minimising this as this isn’t why it’s happening.but sometimes just getting out of the panic mindset takes that edge off a little bit.

Will the tube run?

This is my only concern

Candles , torches , camping gas stove

So guessing it will not apply to emergency services/train stations/hospitals/police/shops etc?

There are sensible threads about this in the preppers section which include all information about the blackout rotas and showing what time your particular area will be affected (if it happens,). It comes from the published government document. Shops etc are not protected services and will be affected. Only critical services like large hospitals, air traffic control, water treatment etc are excluded.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/995049/esec-guidance.pdf

Blackouts can happen any time people. We had a 4 hour one over tea time this month, with 3 minutes warning - enough to boil a kettle and make a flask. We all need to have a torch and some food we can eat cold and maybe a couple of litres of water in the house. All the time.

That said, I do not expect to have load shedding this winter.

If your freezer warms up sufficiently to make food unsafe in a scheduled 2 or 3 hour blackout, you need a new freezer. Providing you don’t open it too many times, the food will be fine.

According to the CDC website (1st on Google), it’s 48 hours for a full freezer and 24 hours in a half full freezer so stocked up is better?

That made me laugh!

I’ve just ordered a battery powered lantern. Even if we don’t have scheduled power cuts, it’s probably a good idea to have one in case a storm brings down the power cables.

Power bank fully charged, phone fully charged. I’d just sit in bed and browse the web for a few hours. No big deal for me

Darbs76 How are you going to surf the Internet during a power cut?

And a cat called Pyewhacket.