The things that got us through the storm
Last week’s arctic storms shouldn’t have caught anyone by surprise (ERCOT notwithstanding). There was plenty of warning, and the lines out the door at H-E-B stores were testaments to the fact that people knew temperatures were going to drop like a very cold rock.
Still, once things froze, many of us wished we had something — a battery-powered coffee maker, a rechargeable flashlight, more charcoal — to make things a bit more comfortable. Others found they were able to repurpose things they already owned to help them make it through the nights without power.
We asked people to tell us about the stuff they wish they’d had or that they already did in advance of this once-in-a-generation winter storm. Here’s what they told us:
Tea-light candles
Several years ago, Dave Terrazas bought several tea-light candles — too many. “I couldn’t find anything smaller than packages of 50,” the chef said. “So I took the three I needed from the box and shoved the rest in the back of a cabinet, figuring I was never going to see them again.”
Although his home near Our Lady of the Lake University never lost power, he knew CPS was calling for residents to cut back their energy usage as possible. So Terrazas turned the lights off and switched to candle power, using half a dozen each in his dining room and bedroom.
“I put some thick drinking glasses over them, and that reflected light was so good, I was able to (do some paperwork),” said Terrazas, who lives by himself. “I probably used about 80 percent of the candles over the next three days.”
Solar lights and hand warmers
Melissa Hernandez found two items she already owned unexpectedly helpful in making it easier to get through last week’s storms.
The first were the solar-powered LED lights she had lining her walkway outside. Charged up during the day, she realized they could also be used to light the inside of her house at night.
“They’re just those generic solar lights you see at Lowe’s and Home Depot,” she said of the lights, which sell online for as little as $13 for a set of four. “They didn’t last all night, but they gave us a few hours of light.”
She was also thankful to have the battery-powered hand warmer her brother bought their 99-year-old grandfather for Christmas last year.
“I put it under his blanket when he went to bed, and it created enough warmth to keep him cozy and comfortable,” she said.
Charcoal and firewood
As last week’s storms approached, Timothy and Francisco Chagolla Retzloff thought they’d laid in a sufficient quantity of firewood and charcoal. Think again. When the electricity went off, they quickly burned through almost all their supply, first of charcoal, then of firewood, since Francisco had to make all their meals on an outdoor grill because he couldn’t use the electric stove in the kitchen.
“He made everything on that grill: breakfast, chicken breasts for lunch, beans, seafood pasta, cowboy coffee, you name it,” said Timothy Chagolla Retzloff, a freelance playwright. “My family teases me because I’d bought so much charcoal and wood, but I wish we’d had more.”
There is a bright side to the couple’s experience, however. After Francisco used the last of the charcoal and started burning the mesquite for fuel, they quickly realized they liked the flavor the wood added to the food.
“It added this nice mesquite flavor to everything he cooked,” Timothy said.
Rechargeable flashlight
Stuck in the dark for several nights during the storms, Mike Senneff found the rechargeable, LED flashlight he’s owned for more than a decade invaluable for keeping the family’s Mahncke Park house brightly lit.
“It’s a Milwaukee rechargeable, and I adjusted it to light upwards toward the ceiling,” said Senneff, co-owner of the specialty landscape company Natura. Unlike candles, he explained, the flashlight cast a nice, steady glow that lit up the whole room.
Also nice, the 18-volt, batterypowered model M18 (milwaukee tool.com, $49) is so energyefficient, it didn’t need recharging once during the entire three days of the storm.
Warm slippers
Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference. Retired web designer Ray Fuller said he isn’t a slippers guy, but he couldn’t pass up the fur-lined, down-filled pair he saw about three years ago at Restoration Hardware for, he thinks, about $5.
“It was a closeout on Christmas items like ornaments and the other odd things they sell,” he said. “But when I got home, I threw them in the back of the closet.”
When the storm came and temperatures dropped at his ranch in New Braunfels, he dug the slippers out of the closet.
“I wore them over heavy socks pretty much all the time,” he said. “They were easy to take off and put back on when I had to wear rubber boots to go outside and break the ice on the goat water.”
Fuller also found the clip-on headlamps he bought for less than $5 each years ago helpful for when he had to go out and feed the horses at night.
“My wife, Carole, and I used these headlamps walking around the house in the dark, to cook with and even to read a book,” Fuller said, adding, “They work better than trying to hold a flashlight.”
Battery-powered coffee maker
Once, when the power came back on after being out for several hours in Margaret Heyland’s Frisco home, she rushed to put a pod into the electric coffee maker. She’d been without hot java for several hours and needed her fix.
“The water had just heated up, and I pushed the start button when the power went back off again,” she said. “Grr.”
When this is over, she vowed at the time, she was going to buy a battery-powered coffee maker so she’d never be in this position again. And that’s just what she did, going online (once the power came back) and ordering a Roadpro coffee pot (roadprobrands.com), which plugs into a 12-volt port of a car or truck and makes 20
ounces of coffee in 20 minutes.
“It cost only $37,” said Heyland, director of customer service for the financial and health-care-services software maker Argo, based in Richardson. “Genius. Now when the power goes out again, I can start my car and make a pot of coffee.”
Pear burner
Insurance broker Jeff Judson was glad he had his pear burner ready to go during last week’s arctic storm. Basically an adjustable flame thrower, pear burners, also called weed burners, are used by ranchers and others to kill weeds and to burn off the spines from prickly pear cactus so livestock can get to the water- and nutrient-rich pads.
Judson didn’t use his Flame King Weed Burner (flameking .com, $50) for feeding cattle, however.
“I used it to start my fireplace this morning when we didn’t have heat,” he said at the height of the storm last week. “Usually, I leave enough wood so there’ll be hot coals the next morning, but I’ve been running out of wood, so I didn’t want to waste any.”
He also used the burner, which runs on propane, to quickly light his barbecue pit. “I can get the charcoal hot and ready to start cooking in, like, five minutes,” he said. “Much quicker than using lighter fluid or a chimney.”
An important consideration, especially when the temperature’s in the single digits.