I live in the DC area and this past weekend was crazy with that storm. Many folks in my area are still without power and will be until the end of this week. I realized during the storm that I don't have an emergency kit prepared. Need to get on that. How many T1s (who use pumps) have an emergency kit prepared? If so, what do you keep in it?
Also, how do you keep insulin cool in the event of a power outage? Thankfully, we only lost power for about 12 hours. I put two vials in my purse within a Frio pouch and surrounded the rest in my fridge with ice packs. It stayed pretty cold (definitely no warmer than 65 degrees or so), so it's fine. But given there was NO ICE to be found anywhere in our area, I'm wondering what I would have done if our power had been out longer. The only idea I could come up with was putting it all in Frio pouches (I have several) and storing it in our basement (which stays pretty cool, even without AC). With no power, the upper two floors of our house quickly reach temps above 85 degrees. Any tips?
I also live near DC (Montgomery County) and the area was very badly hit. This morning there were still trees down on the state highway I live on, and no sign of power coming back on. (There could always be a miracle, but it was about a week after the blizzard of 2010, about a week after the ice storm of Feb 2000, about a week after Hurricane Katrina... always about a week for Pepco.)
What I do, is take the ice-gel-paks that my insurance company's use to ship my insulin with, into work every morning and freeze them in the freezer at work. Take them home and swap out with the old ice paks. Repeat next morning. I have a styrofoam tub with a styrofoam cap that has my insulin stockpile and it all fits OK.
It's good to hear that you have power; I've been following the reports of the aftermath of the storm because it reminded me so much of a few years back when a hurricane hit the inland community where I live.
We were without power for 12 days in August. I remember it being so quiet that you could hear helicopters above our neighborhood surveying the damage. Every traffic light in the entire city was out for a week. Very few gas pumps operating because there weren't enough generators. People standing in line for hours to get a bag of ice. In a word...miserable.
I was totally unprepared and had quite a few vials of insulin on hand at the time. I did the best I could with gel packs that I had previously frozen. When the local pharmacy opened, I went to see if I could store my supplies there - no luck. The only thing I could come up with was Frio pouches and I returned it to the refrigerator as soon as the power came back on.
To my surprise my insulin survived but it was stressful. I do keep a kit now with all my most important papers in a case that I can just grab and go and diabetes supplies enough for a few weeks. Beyond that, I would hope that I could just travel out of the area to get what I need or at least make it to the Red Cross station. That's what they kept advising here after the hurricane.
I have a small insulin cooler that holds 9 bottles of insulin and will run off the accessory plug in my car. I also have a 3000w gen set that will run a small fridge, radio, TV, and computers.
Does this run on batteries at all? I've thought about getting it for the whole keeping insulin cool issue, but the lack of batteries kind of defeats the purpose for me ...
I'm in MoCo too. We're neighbors. This storm was really surprising. We have power, but many neighborhoods around us are still getting power restored. I went for a run yesterday morning and was surprised at the number of generators still running.
