Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: How prepared is your community for emergencies?

[Bob Morrison (rhmorrison]

  We have an emergency generator that powers our common house. It runs on 
natural gas, so won't run out of fuel. Due to capacity, it doesn't power the 
heating, cooling, or laundry machines. The water heater runs on propane, so we 
have hot water. There is a small ongoing cost for maintenance and for 
occasionally adding circuits to the generator that should have been on it from 
day one. 
  In the fall of 2014, I think, we had a 4-day outage and we got by. On 
weekdays, most people who didn't have to report to a workplace spent days and 
evenings in the common house. We had a kind of camaraderie we rarely have 
otherwise. Our cable Internet was down, but with smartphones we set up a WiFi 
hotspot so that we had Internet access at the common house. 
  Except for about two homes that have an emergency generator, we don't have 
backup power for our homes. 
  I would like us to do more to be prepared for emergencies. 

Bob Morrison
Mosaic Commons Cohousing
Berlin, MA