Agreed! It's like we have been trained to wait for the services to come in and save us. We cannot get insurance because of our wood burning stove, and yet we wouldn't have heat without it.
What do you do in the winter with that 250 gallon tote to put out a fire? And have you had issues with your smoke detectors at all? We have had an extremely sensitive detector that I think is detecting the particulate in the air.
Thanks for the thoughtful post. One should always know what to do in an emergency situation, no matter whether they are at home or elsewhere!
In the winter time, having a black tote will help tremendously with keeping the water from freezing. But for those on the grid, having a submersible water heater would work GREAT at keeping that water usable in an emergency. As for us, we have an in ground well near the house that never freezes that we can pull water out of in case of emergency.