And, sadly, the credulous fools here threw the baby out with the bath water. We should have kept civil defense planning in the forefront, if only for the resiliency it lends during national disasters. Instead, we “de-emphasized” it all, and kept pouring concrete since the 1960s without including provisions for civil defense storage or shelter. Utter foolishness…

But, as with all things, the citizens are doing a better job than the government, in certain locales:

http://jeppgroup.org/about-jepp/publicity-and-recognition/

Joyce is a small town on the coast of Washington, and they’re doing what every community on that side of the Cascades should be: Taking pragmatic steps to ensure community survival. If I were over there, one of the things I’d be suggesting is that they need to stockpile fuel for earth moving equipment, and know where to get what they’ll need to repair the damage to communications that will likely result from “the big one” letting go out on the Cascadia.

Interesting BBC report on the town’s efforts, here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-43841897/the-us-town-prepping-for-devastating-disaster

Self-organized and individual preparations at the lowest level are more likely to actually work and be effective; rather than do what they did in New Orleans during Katrina, awaiting Big Government to fly in and rescue them, some of the locals in Western Washington are doing their best to “get off the X” on their own.

Interesting comment. Sounds like an optimal combination of govt service and local community is in place there, with the latter able to work redundantly. We should all be so fortunate.

We’ve had heat waves in Ontario this year, and some decent recent winters, but our last big challenge was the 2003 blackout over much of eastern North America. Depending on where you were, that went on for days or weeks.

There was a huge ice storm in 1998 in much the same large regions, hit some places like Montreal and outer Ottawa hard. Downtown, not so much. I got shoved into the plexiglass side of a bus stop hard enough to show up at work with my forehead bleeding icy blood all over the place, but OTOH never lost power at home. Good times.

For those everyday situations, I’ve thought a tad more seriously about it. I got into the habit of drinking bottled water, so 3 days’ water in house with moderate consumption is probably never a problem. Non perishable food is more of one, though surviving on crackers wouldn’t be the end of me for just the officially proclaimed 3 days. fruit and veg in the fridge would last some of that of course, so I don;t have to poison myself with all starch diets.

I might need attention at the end of those 3 days, more than once would have been the case.

But this summer has at least proved to me that I can endure my apartment at 30 degrees celsius for many days at a time. If it were an Ottawa winter and the heat is out, though, 3 days will be hard.

No point to this, really… Just happy to endorse the bottled water industry.

The emergency services are really well organized here. We’re in a commune of 350 people that has its own sapeurs-pompiers (volunteer firefighters/emergency services). There’s maybe 25 locals in that so everyone knows someone who is a pompier. It communicates hierarchically up through various divisions. There are giant aerials for fancy communication devices at their base in the village.

If there’s a significant outage the people here have the culture to check the neighbors and communicate back to the village if there’s anything needed. The pompiers also have water tanks as part of their firefighting equipment and they do transport water for cattle if needed as well as anything the humans might need. We all know where the old fragile folk live.

There are maybe 11 big farms and several smaller ones with heavy equipment. So they were all out there with tractors and diggers and chainsaws clearing the roads for a few days after the tempête. They also have towable cattle water tanks and pumps. Even without the emergency services the farmers would do fine looking after people. It is also in the culture to look after the locals.

One of my kids is a firefighter cadet so she knows more about the details than me. It’s a well networked system that I think would be of a lot of value if we had another Klaus or worse.

But yeah you could conceive of a time when government broke down. The local structures would still be used since they make so much sense. We’re farmers in the country so a lot more independent of the government than town or city folk are. They network with their neighbors because that’s just what they do. The kids all go to the same schools and play on the same sports teams. They all have a hatred of Paris. Now I think of it they’d probably do better without a central government interfering in an emergency.

And a gun.

And a place in the country.