Learning From Climate Disasters
I try to learn something out of every climate disaster (sadly, there’s no end of supply of those), but this fire in LA is particularly rough because my kid is like 1/2 mile from the evacuation zone (they’re safe and now that the fire’s maybe being contained, I’m less freaked out).
I grew up in CA and I’m very cognizant of wildfire threats to not just burning down your house or forcing you to flee, but toxifying the air for weeks or longer.
Relevant posts:
- A Note on Wildfire Smoke From an Aerosol Scientist
- Backup Power/Battery Options for the Climate Crisis
In addition to my battery backup and air filter posts above, I learned a couple new things out of the climate-driven LA fire disaster:
1 – Air Purifiers in Wildfire-induced Power Outages: I got my kids small Jackeries+portable solar for Christmas, enough to basically have backup power for laptops/wifi/phones… but I didn’t even think about air purifiers. I’d sent my kid out to California with a full complement of wildfire stuff (air purifier with particle counter and smoke filter, mini air purifier for the car, N95 masks), but there are/were 200,000+ people without power due to the fires and the air quality is toxic. It’s not a good mix.
So I ran the math for that… (look away if you’re math-phobic!)
- Jackery 300 has 293 Wh backup power
- Jackery has optional 40 W mini portable solar panels, which generate 40 Wh per hour of full sun
- Aroeve air purifier draws 34 W which means it uses 34 Wh per hour; in 24 hours that’s 408 Wh
- 400 Wh (40 Wh solar x 10 hrs) + 293 Wh (Jackery 300 backup power) = 693 Wh for the first 24 hrs
TL;DR: the Jackery alone won’t run the air purifier for 24 hrs, but the addition of portable solar means you can easily run the air purifier and have backup power for phones/laptop/wifi for the first 24 hrs, and every day you have at least 10 hours of sun, you can run the air purifier for another 24 hours.
2 — Backup Water is a Very Good Idea: My kid is under a boil water alert right now. From Hurricane Helene, I learned that your water supply could be wiped out by a flood that leaves your house just fine but takes out the water processing plant or the pipes that run to your house. So we got a couple 5 gal Primo water jugs to keep in our basement plus a small hand pump to dispense the water. Not enough to hold us for substantial water disruption, but enough to get us started plus we then have jugs for hauling water, which is what my friend in NC desperately needed. She would drive to people who still had water and fill up then drive home.
What I just learned in the CA wildfires is that ash can fall into your water treatment plant and kill off the stuff that’s cleaning the water and now the chlorine treatment isn’t working, hence the boil water alert. Also the firefighters are using all the water, so water pressure is super low, and that makes it hard for the water purification systems to work properly. I had no idea this could happen, but I’m now sending my kid the hand water pump and telling them they need to get a 5 gal water jug to have on hand. Probably not gonna work for this fire because they’re already in the water shortage, but maybe — and it definitely will work for next time.
Because there will be a next time. And that’s the most important lesson: do these things before the emergency. I mean, just TRY getting an air purifier in SoCal right now. It can seem like extra expense or something you’ll never use, but unfortunately… that’s not likely to be true. And if it is, fine. You can educate other people who will need it. Or have emergency supplies to help your neighbors. We’re in this fucking nightmare together, after all.
Which is why I’m putting this in a blog post—to have for future use but also to make it easy to share. So please make your own plans for the climate disasters that are going to continue to roll out like clock-work (and my god actually get worse, which I really don’t want to think about, but it’s true). But also start telling your friends, share posts like this, talk about it. Help build community resilience through education and then pressure your local officials to get ready for stuff like this. There’s a lot more to know and to learn and I’ll share along the way. But we each gotta take responsibility for building community-level resilience as well as taking care of our loved ones.
Stay safe out there, friends.
