What did you do to prepare this week?

After being cut off from our natural gas supply for more than 48 hours, along with about 20,000 other homes in Arizona and New Mexico, we have gas again. This 'emergency' was a management decision on the part of our supply company -- deprive some so that others may have enough. They were slow in notifying us thus making it more difficult to plan and manage. It was at least 8 hours after the gas was discontinued before we found out on the news. Today, we saw a lot of people at the hardware store getting repair items for frozen pipes, now thawing.

We thought about going to our alternate location, which has propane heat, but it is a few hours' drive away. The gas company, when they finally did communicate through the media, indicated that we MUST have someone home for them to restore service at our houses at undisclosed times this weekend. Guess that was to ensure everything was off and we don't come home to a fiery explosion or several inches of water in our houses (Oops, too late for my boss, who wasn't notified and came home to a broken pipe in his ceiling. Nice job, Southwest gas! Proper notification and he would have turned the water OFF and drained a pipe or two before coming to work.)

So, to prep I picked up a couple of hot water bottles which were very useful because we had electricity and could microwave the water outside the bottle and pour it in. DO NOT heat or re-heat the filled hot water bottle in the microwave!! If the water starts to boil in the hot water bottle, you could have a devastating explosion of scalding water as the bag ruptures.

I also started researching portable heaters that do not require electricity. I will probably buy one that works with a 5 gallon propane tank. That way we are covered for Southwest Gas's management decisions or a power outage that would keep the furnace fan from working.