White Plains Public Library

The storm is coming, and the list is ready

The forecast put the ice storm on Tuesday, and by Sunday the bread and the batteries were gone from the stores, which is the annual proof that everyone's preparedness plan is the same plan, panic two days late. Two winters ago I asked the machine to end that cycle, and the system it built has carried us through three outages since. The master list came first, built in an evening, the things a house actually needs for five days of no power in the Hudson Valley in February, water at a gallon per person per day, the flashlights by location, the battery radio, the charge banks, the cooler logistics, the generator fuel with the safety rules in capital letters about never running it indoors, which the machine insisted on and was right to. Then the personal layer, our prescriptions and the pharmacy's emergency number, the neighbor's landline that still works when the cells fail, my sister in Ohio as the out of area contact, the dog's food, the one thing I always forget which we will not discuss. Then the seasonal habit the machine enforces with a reminder, the water rotation, the battery checks, the fuel stabilizer, October and April. When the ice came in February, we were not the house scrambling, we were the house with the list already done, and the difference in the days without power was not comfort exactly. It was the absence of the low hum of worry that used to start with the first freezing rain forecast. The list is printed and taped inside the pantry door. The machine wrote the first draft. The storm, as always, wrote the revisions.

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