In the Blink of an Eye...Situations CAN Change!
So, recently, I was looking after a friend's gaff, about a 1.5-hour drive from where I live in rural Spain. They were off for a birthday treat in Ronda, Spain, and their 3 dawgs needed someone to keep an eye on them.
I got to their’s a day early so as to spend a little time with them before they departed and experienced 5 or 6 very short electrical outages, but they told me that had been happening on and off for a while…so…normal (?!)
Anyways, they left on their break and I dug in to house and canine minding…the pooches already knew me for many years so all good.
My friends left midmorning on the Saturday.
On the Monday, around midday, the electrics all went off…nothing new for that location I had in mind, so I waited for its return.
However, I also noticed the water pressure dropping…. Was this also normal?… I looked for receptacles to gather as much water as I could and drained the water pipes of as much of what they would give up.
Should be all back on soon, I thought…
Now, electricity off meant zero communications with the outside world…not an issue if it was just a short period, something you DO kinda get used to in rural Spain.
But….when it got to 7 and 8 hours, I wasn’t sure this would be the “norm”.
Then I heard a shout at the gates, a woman who lives quite close to my friends house…
“They think it’s a cyberattack, power off across all of Spain, Portugal and parts on France” she said, having been to the village some 8km away.
“Everything is shut down, no electric, no mobile mast…no water!” At which point, she kindly offered me a candle to see me through the dark hours.
Hearing that, I had to think of a strategy as well as the fact that I couldn’t get information or communicate with anyone. I assessed the water situation and allotted water for the dogs and held back on my coffee addiction…looking around for a backup water supply proved a negative (back home, we had backup solar power and backup water reserves for our animals).
And so, 27 hours without electric supply and what turned out to be 47 hours without any water ensued.
Naturally, with no power to anything like civilisation meant it wasn’t worth using fuel to go and seek added supplies of water.
When the power came back after 27 hours, I had it in my head that water supplies wouldn’t be far behind, but I didn’t count on it, knowing I had the responsibility of ensuring the dogs had water to hand in the often high temperatures of Spain.
When the electrics did come back, I got further confirmation of the countrywide outage but also made sure that my friends knew to bring back some level of added water supply in case the situation didn’t rectify itself.
47 hours and the water began to sputter back through…Again I quickly filled and refilled containers just in case this would be a temporary supply…and not really knowing what was going on in the world!
By the time my friends cam back, everything had settled into normality again…
But, my point? Well, take nothing for granted, whether you live an Off-Grid lifestyle or any other…consider what would YOU do or what do YOU have to counter an event, natural or otherwise, and that can literally happen in seconds, where you are without electric and water?
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