How have you prepared? If at all.

My local city has now shut street and traffic lights regularly because the power grid is under strain already. City says we should prepare for regular 2h or longer ( in extreme cases up to 3 days) power cuts at peak times Morning/Midday/Late evening, to keep the emergency services and hospitals running.

[https://72hours.fi/](https://72hours.fi/) has some good advice and everyone should be aware of it, it’s available in english also.

Also please note that during a power outage you are not supposed to drain any water, you can fill ur bottles but make sure nothing goes down ur sink and don’t flush toilette, can lead to flooding.

But how have you personally prepared?

Until now my mentality was ” oh yeah, not gonna happen anyway propably ” but the total shutting of the street and traffic lights did wake me up a bit.

21 comments

  1. Hmmm, I couldn’t say that I’m nervous about that. I have a lot of different emergency supplies and abilities to live some days without electricity and water.

  2. I dug up an old flashlight. Other than that, i follow the news. If a planned power putage is coming to happen, I’ll get myself a litre of water from tap and charge my phone and laptop. Maybe eat something.

    My only preparation for unplanned outage is the flashlight. I’m sure I’ll manage a one hour cut. I just dont believe there will be unintentional long outages. I might buy a bigher permanent water supply and a fully charged mobile charger so i can survive a 24-hour shortage. Zero reason to store food, you can survive a day without hot food. I have some nuts and seeds anyway.

  3. I’ve done a few things. Mostly because I have two toddlers, alone I wouldn’t bother.

    – I bought 10 litres of water.
    – Bought a few canned foods. I also make sure that there’s always enough baby food for few days.
    – Bought a few cold packs to my freezer, I can chuck them in the fridge to help it keeping the temperature low. But if it’s not super cold outside I can just store my food outside obviously.
    – I’m keeping my car’s gas tank at least half full.
    – I bought a light gas cooker and 500g of gas so I can warm up the baby food.

  5. Shift worker, mainly working evenings and nights so I even normally wash my dishes and laundry at night on weekdays
    At home always have some bottled water, got food that doesn’t need to be cooked, flashlights
    At work our preparation was getting some headlamps, when I asked if our electric locks open up during power outage nobody knew, so I’m more worried about the preparation for such an event at work
    Oh yeah and good humor and calm mind, that always helps in situations like this

  6. If it comes really to a three day power outage (doubt it), then I will shine with my thing for collecting board games. When netflix is out of the question, I can entertain the whole block without any need tor electricity, for hours and hours. Then the Finn never ever gets to mock me about it anymore.

    Seriously, though, I wouldn’t even know what to prepare. We always have food in the house. We have a fireplace, I can cook in there. We are into camping, so we have several camping cookers using different fuel. I like candles and cozy lights, so we always have candles. The Finn is an electrician and has plenty of battery powered lamps.

    The toilet thing sucks, but it is winter. If all else fails: when you do it outside it frozen solid rather quickly and easy to dispose off. Considering all the doggie poop bags in the bin, two more are not really an issue.

    As for you in an apartment: Do you have thermosbottles/a thermos cup for soup? Those things store heat for a surprisingly long time, so that would be an option. Other then that, cold food isn’t nice, but one can survive on “over night oat meal” and sandwiches.

  7. So the government is graciously scheduling my naps for me! Neat!

    I wouldn’t worry. 2 hours a day is nothing. 3 days is something, but nothing a few liters of water, wool socks and a blanket can’t solve.

  9. Here in Jkl, Lumme is preparing us with an all night electric projection advertisrment on their factory….

  10. Dug out my old fleshlight. Need to buy some heat packs, so in case of an ”emergency” it doesn’t feel like having intercourse with a dead person.
    Honestly, haven’t made any preparation. But I do have a weber grill and almost full bottle of gas. So I can warm food and melt snow.

  11. I have quite a lot of wine and beer. That should get me through the day. But in all seriousness, I’m a bit worried about heating and cooking. I remember when I was a kid we had a power outage that lasted for about a week, water ran out on day 3, we were fine as we had a wood stove and a gas cooker. Now I don’t have that, I’m on district heating and I have an electric stove. I should probably buy one of those gas camping stoves for cooking.

  12. Lighting:
    Battery powered led lanterns.
    USB rechargeable led headlight
    Regular non led flash light
    Candles

    Power:
    Rechargeable batteries
    Non rechargeable batteries
    USB Powerbanks
    12 v inverter
    12v battery (lifepo4 preferably, but anything will do)
    Generator

    Cooking:
    Gas stove with cartridges
    Wood and charcoal for bbq
    Solid fuel
    Piezo, Lighter, a lot of matches

    Food:
    Frozen food
    Cans (enough pea soup for a couple of weeks, fruit, veg, meat)
    Pasta and rice
    Frozen dry food (outdoor food)
    Candies

    Drinks:
    Powdered milk
    Coffee
    Non refrigerated Juice
    Beer wine stronger stuff

    And a lot of water and the mean to treat it UV light, filter and chemical. (Snow is good)

    Medicine:
    Painkiller and iodine pills
    First aid kit

    A bucket and s### load of bags (pun intended)
    I’ll pee outside ;/)

    Basic outdoor tooling, saw, axe, knife

    Extra blanket duvet and sleeping bags

    Books

  14. I will move to Helsinki at the beginning of January. This post scared the crap out of me. Can someone explain why and if this is really happening? Is it related to the energy crisis caused by Russia?

    Should I bring something with me to be prepared for this? Is there a source of information in English where I can follow the developments in this regard?

    Thanks in advance.

  15. Nothing has been said about 3 day power outages, only about 2 hour rotating ones.

    Local power company has stated that they will keep the water and drain systems powered up, so no issues with water expected. However, got drinking water for a couple of days stored, as well as some long shelf life food.

    Got Trangias and gas, so cooking won’t be an issue very soon. Maybe I should go get some rödsprit from Biltema, though.

    If the house would be getting cold, setting up a tent in living room, and sleeping in there in sleeping bag is an option.

  16. I always have battery lights charged and food&drinks that can be prepared with wood burning stove that also heats up the place.

    All this fear mongering seems to be focus bombarded to city folk. People on countryside are used to power outages that have lasted long periods.

    Also what they constantly tell on the news and magazines is that those planned outages should only last hour or two. Considering large amount of people survived 2011 Tapaninpäivän storm where some had no electricity for months i think people can survive 2 hours without military grade power generator and ibc container amount of water.

  17. I have a powerbank I make sure once a month to recharge and made sure I have a working flashlight other than my phone.

  18. My living conditions are so miserable that power or water outages cannot make them worse. Especially water outage since I don’t have water to begin with 🙂

  19. I live in the countryside so I have it pretty easy all things considered. I have a fireplace, firewood, canisters for storing water, a wood-heated stove for cooking, an oil-heating backup system and if all else fails, my parents next door have all of the above as well as several diesel-powered generators, one with enough capacity to light up the entire village for a while if need be.

    Power outages in the winter used to happen more frequently when I was a kid, what with open air power lines and falling trees. It’s not our first rodeo.

    Edit: oh, also a flashlight that I tend to always have on me and some candles.

    I remember power outages being kind of fun when I was a kid, since it meant that mum would light candles and we’d have a fire in the stove and play board games until the lights came back up.

  21. Have not prepared much. But I have things for outdoor activities (water filters, lamps, some food packets), I often fish, have a week or two of groceries, have firewood for the winter and still plenty of coal for my bbq. So I’m feeling quite confident if something were to happen.

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