A year + ago when Hurricane Ike hit Houston, the electricity grid was shredded. The biggest problems were access to drinking water, and ice to keep food fresh.
The gubmint FEMA brought in water about 5 days after the storm but volunteers in Hoston had to unload it, Homeland Security and FEMA were useless.
Generators use a lot of gasoline, so they are not very practical although we did have one for about 7 days. All together we were out of power nearly 2 weeks.
Water was the key shortage.
I’ve read that the two most important items during Katrina were water and plastic bags.
I can understand the water part, and plastic bags are useful, but I can’t see why they were so important...
Exactly. We had the generators but could not get the gas. In Houston the refinery is across town but with no electricity the pumps would not work. Found one station with electric and a young guy was pumping gas at about one cent per 5 second but the meter was running backwards. He was laughing telling everyone “look at me I am getting FREE gas”. After sitting watching him for 5 min (the other pumps were working fine) I walked up to him and said with a smile... maybe the pump is sucking the gas out of your tank. You should have seen the guys face as he quickly turned off the pump. Kodak moment for sure.
And that's the most important item too. We can survive without food, but not without water. I purchased a portable water filtering system like FEMA, the Red Cross, and other agencies use that purifies water, no matter the condition. One filter will purify 60K gallons of water.