If the Power Grid Goes Down

An Oregon state senator sent an email to his constituents this week. It reports on recent drills the state has quietly conducted.

More states should do this. Then they should openly report on the findings. Forewarned is forearmed.

If the grid ever goes down do to a cyberattack, life in affected communities will change dramatically. How dramatically? Read this:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *The State and Federal Government are not prepared for a major catastrophic emergency in the Northwest. We will likely never be prepared thus YOU and your Community must prepare yourselves. Whether is a Cascadia earthquake, tsunami, volcano, pandemic, terrorist attack, or grid overload does not matter. In almost every single potential event, the power grid is down for weeks if not months. Besides power outage it means communications is out, your cell phone goes dead the first day, potable water stops flowing, sewage is no longer pumped, there is no power to pump fuel into any vehicles, there are no grocery stores, bridge failures in many events will ‘island’ several million Oregonians for multiple weeks if not months. Prepare for at least a month.

FYI, we have conducted drills again this past June along with increased planning. This update is a result of those drills as key ‘state and federal’ emergency management officials were clear that life and death for many Oregonians may well rest upon individual and local non-government community preparation. If you want a very good read on the possible scenarios look no further than Ted Koppel’s recent book “Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.” The book and free summaries are available online.

How do you prepare? Many people say they cannot afford to prepare for an emergency. Many people look at Red Cross and other lists then revert back to the thought ‘it is too expensive for me to be prepared.” That is the purpose of this email newsletter. If you want a detailed perfect plan you can Google the “Red Cross” or “FEMA” or a dozen webpages offering expensive solutions. Below I will outline some economic imperfect solutions you should consider since the ‘government’ will not be coming to rescue you at the beginning of any major catastrophic event.

(For the rest of the report, click the link.)

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