In Reference to my comment 7 months ago about the Samsung Refrigerator not powering back up after a neighborhood power outage- it happened again this weekend while we were out of town- storm apparently came through the area, downed tree limbs knocked out power to the neighborhood on Saturday. We were planning to come home this Monday but after learning about the outage via Facebook came home Sunday and sure enough - 2 year old Samsung -no power, 15 year old Kitchenmaid and 20 year old Amana humming along no problem. If ANYONE knows of a solution or has been successful dealing with Samsung on this issue please let us know!!! I'm calling again now but not confident- will update blog if any success.

--We are emergency-ready at our house, including 72-hours of emergency food that doesn't require heating or refrigeration. We've used it several times during ice storms when the utilities were out for a number of days. --We have a bank of marine cell batteries we can recharge with solar panels as our back-up power. We can run our refrigerator for days on end. We also have a 5-in-One Portable Power Pack (available at Harbor Freight) that works well for auxiliary power to run a fan, sump pump, air up tires, jump-start a vehicle, etc... We can also recharge it with solar. We have an Igloo Chest that can be powered with battery back-up power to use to safely keep hot food hot, or you can switch it to the cold mode and use it like a small refrigerator. --All kinds of alternative cooking options. Options which can be used indoors or out. Everyone needs a chaffing dish and sterno (you can find chaffing dishes for a couple bucks at thrift stores). You'd be surprised how much you can cook using this safe-to-use indoors method. One can of Sterno can be used for approximately 6 meals of light cooking/reheating. Charcoal is one of the least expensive storage fuels per BTU. Store it in 5-gallon buckets to keep it dry. A large (20#) bag will cook 1 meal a day for a month. Add a COBB Grill and it will use 8-10 briquettes for 3 hours at 450° for extra economy over a standard charcoal grill. --Be sure to also have several good-quality Thermos bottles and/or thermal coffee urns/servers to safely store any HOT leftover food, or keep hot water hot. Once you've heated water, keeping it in a Thermos bottle means you can have instant soup, instant cocoa/coffee or other hot beverages, instant oatmeal, etc.). I also like to keep a few boxes Mini-Moo's - individual servings of 1/2 & 1/2 - that keep at room temperature. They can be used on cereal instead of milk, or in hot beverages. --BTW - It takes a lot of fuel/energy to heat water, so once you have it heated -- store it. We also have a number of hot water bottles that we'll fill to warm the bed, or just sitting around in a cold room with a blanket over you. The next morning you can use the still-warm water in the bottles for washing/shaving. We also keep a large box of "Hothands" or "Grabber" (there are different name brands) hand warmers (packets that provide heat for around 7-8 hours). With 3 solar ovens, I can heat water in those - hot enough to pasteurize it. --We also store emergency water in the basement in 5-gallon and 3-gallon jugs (100-gallons total), and have a 1,000-gallon capacity outdoors in our rain barrels. If we get an alert there is an ice storm, we'll fill our tubs with water and add some liquid bleach for purifying it, to use for flushing. We have several methods for purifying water without electricity. --Emergency propane heaters (which can be safely used indoors) and our gas fireplace we can use during a power outage. We've used all of these many times during power outages. --I keep a small flashlight tucked into the corner of the sofa. It seems like the electricity often goes out while we are watching TV, so the flashlight is easy to find. We also have ASCELLA LED light bulbs placed strategically around the house (bathrooms and lamps). While the power is on, the bulb charges itself. These bulbs stay lit for an average of 3-hours when the power goes out. You can unscrew it from the socket and use it as a flashlight, but they are especially handy in bathrooms when the power is out, and function well in lamps. They only draw 5 watts of electricity and have a brightness of 150 lumens, and 20,000 hours of life. --I have other solar-powered lights, battery-powered lamps, crank-style flashlights and radios, and I, too, tend to avoid open flames for emergency lighting - especially around curious pets and children. Any open flames are used on top of my kitchen stove. After friends used candles and oil lamps for lighting during a long power outage, their young children developed breathing problems and they had to repaint their home, all from the soot and toxins from candles and oil lamps. -Grainlady

Only a completely "off the grid" setup, as some kooks like to do but which is impractical because of nighttime darkness, would be unaffected by changes in the distribution system. Why do you refer to people who live off the grid "kooks" ? Besides name calling, that sounds really close minded to me especially coming from the guy who has told KT forums members to "open their minds" in past threads. I have a neighbor who has been off the grid for the 25 years that I have known him through a combination of solar and water power. He's far from a kook and lives very comfortably while generating all his own power. Unlike all the people who are upset about their power being turned off during this red flag fire warning, he won't be affected at all. Be advised that I'm not going to get into it with you; I just was curious why you felt the need to call people who choose to live off the grid "kooks". And, calling "crickets" on Lukki Irish is uncalled for. She may very well be busy with other things and hasn't yet seen your posts. Not everyone spends all day on the internet. I haven't been on since this morning because I've been busy with other things.

Olychick is right about logging practices. Logging can be beneficial to forest health when the trees are thinned rather than clear cut, the slash (debris that results from logging such as all the branches that are cut off of the downed trees and smaller trees that are damaged during logging) is removed and a diversity of seedling trees planted to replace those taken during logging operations. Unfortunately, it costs more time and money to log that way, so many companies opt for the cheaper way which is to come in and clear a swath of land. My property shares a border with a large logging company and they come thru here about every 10 years to log. Last time they were here, they left piles of slash and did not replant. Those slash piles are now tinder dry and highly flammable brush such as manzanita has grown where trees once stood. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I would like to share several 1000 words with all of you. We have 3.5 acres in the mountains and spend a great deal of time thinning trees and clearing brush. On our property there is an abundance of wildlife including birds, lizards, frogs, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, coyotes, deer, bears and the occasional mountain lion. The trees are healthy and not over crowded and there is very little brush or fuel on the forest floor. Tree branches are cut from the trees to a minimum height of eight feet to remove ladders which allow fires to get up in the tree tops. This is our property - we will be out thinning again this year as soon as the rains start. It's too dry to run a chainsaw right now: The property next door to us is owned by people who haven't been here in 25 years. Brush has accumulated, the trees have become over crowded and many are dead or dying. The brush is so thick that it's nearly impossible to walk thru the woods. You literally can't see the forest for the trees. Between the two properties, there is a power easement. The local power company contracts with tree companies to maintain the easement which is kept cleared to a width of approximately 50 feet. Two winters ago, a tree dropped a very large branch on the power lines and snapped one of them. We were on vacation at the time and not aware of this until we returned. Our nearest neighbor saw smoke coming from the area of our house, and knowing we were gone, decided to investigate. What he found was a live line that was sending out sparks and that had melted all of the snow around it for a distance of 30 feet. The power company was called, shut off the power and fixed the line. Thank God it was winter and not summer. If it had been summer, those sparks and a little bit of wind are all it would have taken to light up the neglected property next door. There are no simple solutions to this problem and all of these things - maintaining equipment and easements, forest health and forest management are connected. Of course, not all fires start in forested areas, but many do and I personally think that investing in improving the health of our forests thru thinning and removing brush along with responsible logging would be a gigantic step in the right direction. Another thing to consider is the size of the easements. I looked it up last night and the width of an easement is determined by factors such as the voltage of the lines and whether or not the area is urban or rural. According to what I read, the maximum easement is 200 feet, but many (such as the one shown above) are much less than that. With pines and douglas firs reaching a height of 150 to 200 feet, those widths are not enough no matter how much time utilities spend clearing and maintaining their easements. But, property owners don't want to give up that much space to utilities nor do they want their large and beautiful trees removed. I don't know what the answer is, but I think it's important to take into account all of the above factors when discussing this issue as there are no simple one size fits all solutions. Power companies such as PGE haven't done a good job of maintaining their equipment, but there are other factors at play too. The neglected property I've shown you is but a drop in the bucket but it illustrates the conditions that exists in many of our forests, but I hope that they give those reading this thread an idea of the problems we face.