I survived two weeks without electricity, gas or water in my apartment after Hurricane Andrew. Also I couldn’t get out because a tree was blocking my truck. I had prefilled my propane gas tank for my bbq pit, and filled my spare bathtub with water, had lots of candles and batteries and a new hurricane tracking chart and my radio. I put all my fridge food in the freezer, using it as an ice chest and slowly ate stuff as it thawed, (BBQ). I could boil water on the side burner and make coffee, and I highly recommend getting an old style drip coffeepot. Save your batteries for the radio, use candles for light. After about a week, my brother came by to check on me and winched the tree off my truck and gave me a $20 bag of ice. After that I was good.
Reminds me of the 04 hurricane season. I went 15 days w/out power. I used the gas grill for everything. I also had a cheap inverter that I ran off my car battery and it ran the tv and a fan. Ice was hard to come by.
The next year I had a generator and it was a little easier as I could run the fridge. The no a/c thing is the killer down here.
My husband and I lived through the Auckland, NZ blackout that lasted 5 weeks. We were living in an apartment on the 8th floor and had a toddler we had to carry up and down the stairs. Thankfully we were able to move to a long stay hotel after about 2 weeks that was literally across the street that still had power. The power company told my husband we should go stay with “rellies” (relatives) in the country. LOL. We were foreigners. That experience was an eye opener on prepping.
I’ve been through enough things that I’m pretty confident I can last for quite a while on my preps between that and my experience living on Pacific islands. My grocery store in Hawaii always had case lots of Spam and toilet paper. Living on Kauai and hearing about people’s experiences with hurricane Iniki inspired me to finally get my Ham license. Their communications were completely cut off for over a month except for Ham radio. The guy that I currently refill my water bottles with lived on a Caribbean island that had to have it’s drinking water shipped in. We just kind of nod knowingly at each other when I drag my bottles in to refill.