Off Grid Behaviors

When Mother Nature Strikes: Lessons From A Homesteader's Hurricane Experience

• Barry

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Welcome back to Off-Grid Behaviors! After a lengthy hiatus where I focused on fully experiencing and documenting my off-grid journey, I'm returning with powerful insights from a life-changing event—Hurricane Helene's devastating sweep through Augusta, Georgia last September.

What began as preparations for a family visit to Florida quickly transformed into a disaster recovery operation when Helene tore through my homestead, destroying my pop-up camper and greenhouse. The scene resembled something from a disaster movie—tarps and belongings scattered across the property, trees down everywhere, and destruction that continues to require cleanup nearly a year later. Throughout Augusta and surrounding areas, power outages, water disruptions, and infrastructure damage affected thousands.

But here's where my off-grid lifestyle proved invaluable. While many scrambled for basic necessities, I had two generators (2,000W and 4,000W dual-fuel), multiple portable power stations, stored fuel, a portable shower, cooking equipment, and communication tools ready to deploy. This preparation allowed me to maintain refrigeration, communication, and even creature comforts like an ice maker while helping others. The experience wasn't without close calls—I nearly suffered carbon monoxide poisoning when a generator was positioned too close to my house, a mistake that has proven fatal for others during similar emergencies.

As hurricane season approaches again, I'm sharing crucial emergency preparedness takeaways: maintain at least a 1,500-2,000W power station, keep generators 20+ feet from structures, store adequate water and non-perishables, establish communication redundancies with devices like long-range walkie-talkies, and always keep "go bags" in your home and vehicles. Join me next week as we dive deeper into the pros and cons of off-grid living based on my year of experiences. Have you updated your emergency preparations lately? Subscribe now and share your own disaster preparedness stories in the comments!

Barry Smith:

Hey folks. Barry Smith, thank you again for tuning into Off-Grid Behaviors. I've been out for a while due to a variety of reasons. First of all, it was because I wanted to come from a point of an organic approach and tell the story after the mission was complete, and tell the story after the mission was complete. The idea of doing a podcast weekly as I went seemed a little bit nerving for me. I wanted to enjoy the full experience of what I was doing, as I calculated and journaled it on paper. I'm an expert when it comes to audio and video production. As I mentioned before, that's what I teach at high school. So being able to do a video production shooting multiple camera angles, editing the audio and so forth wasn't possible for me at the time. I wanted to enjoy the experience of still traveling and I have a lot of stuff from that, a lot of video footage from that and I took a lot of notes in my journal and from the homestead perspective. That's a whole different story. That's what I want to talk about today.

Barry Smith:

Here in Georgia it is roughly hurricane season hurricane season and on the East Coast hurricane season is typically June through November. Here in Augusta Georgia it's more like August through October. So if you didn't know, last year about this time, latter part of September, we got hit with Hurricane Helene and it was exactly that. It had quite the effect on so much, not just in Augusta but in the whole Georgia area, south Carolina and some other parts not even sure. The ironic thing about it all was my plan was to go to Florida to see about family members in Florida. I had no idea the impact it would have on my homestead and off-grid living as it did. So getting packed up the night before getting ready to go to Florida, the night of this, hurricane Helene comes through and just tears it up. In fact there are still some people recovering from that in various ways. As you see, damage to houses. Some roofs still have tarps on them. I have friends and family whose home was just completely destroyed and had to be rebuilt from the ground up the ground up.

Barry Smith:

My personal experience on my homestead was the loss of my pop-up camper. It was like something. When I went to go take a look. It was pieces everywhere, like on the Wizard of Oz or something you might see on a Marvel movie. Um tarp was over here. The stuff that was inside was scattered all over the place and it was. I'm lucky that I didn't, that I wasn't actually in it. I never would have thought in a million years, honestly, that it would have been that bad.

Barry Smith:

Usually at the school, we are sometimes out of school because we are acting as a safe haven through the Red Cross for people evacuating out of Savannah, georgia, which is approximately less than two hours south, southeast of here, uh, southeast of here. So there were times where we had families and we were out of school and we would open the schools up, where people were in the gyms on cots and food brought in by the red cross and other things for three or four days and we did that about. It was like three years in a row. We did something like that and, for whatever reason, we're not doing that here in my county anymore, but I do recall around this time of year that would happen. So, again, no one thought too much about what could possibly happen here in Little Augusta, because it's just not normal. On the flip side of that, I also lost my greenhouse, so a lot of things were getting, you know, grown for the fall crops and getting some other shrubs and other things that I was learning how to grow the greenhouse would just destroy it. So take a look at that for a second no shelter and no greenhouse, and just sticks and trees and branches all over the place. Just sticks and trees and branches all over the place. I'm still recovering from the cleanup. A lot of trees had fallen still working around that, and here we are today, however, still with a lot of power out, water, internet out here in the city.

Barry Smith:

I was still attending courses online and through Augusta University, and people throughout Georgia were without this, but once I got back to the homestead in the country, I was able to bring a lot of stuff back into the city. For example, I have two generators, I had cans of gas, had batteries, had a portable shower and also a hotspot for internet. So while in the city, I was really fine. A lot of friends and family were saying they bet I was having a good time and I was To have all those things packed up on a trailer ready to go. As I said before on a previous podcast that after an ice storm that hit us back in 2013-14 time frame, I swore that I would never be caught off guard again. Yeah, I couldn't do anything about the camper or the greenhouse, but as far as being without power and water and things of that nature, that was not the case for me. I had this hotspot box thing that I used for school through T-Mobile. I paid $50 a month and that was running everything in the house in the city for TV, again, homework and everything else.

Barry Smith:

One valuable lesson, though, about the generators. I have one that was 2 000 watts that could run some small stuff. It kind of interchanged, and I had another one that was 4 000 watts. It was propane and gas operated. They they called it dual, dual fuel. One thing happened that was terrible and almost could have been really bad was I had it generated too close to the house and fumes were getting into the house through the window or any other means, and it caused the carbon monoxide alarm to go off. We called the fire department or someone and they came and checked the percentage of carbon monoxide in the air and they said it was ghostly dangerous. So note to self by all means, if you're going to be running a generator, do not have it close to a window or give it about 20 feet or more as possible, because it was just. It got horrific, and in fact you may have already read this. Some people have actually lost their lives by trying to protect the generator, not having it outside, thinking someone was stealing it. I read about a lady whose family died because they had it in the house or in the garage or something like that. So safety tip number one, two, three and four for generators get them away from the house 20 plus feet if you can and make sure you have a carbon dioxide um alarm to be sure.

Barry Smith:

So secondly, um had a grill, propane, um flat top type of grill, griddle style, and was able to cook meals daily. Also, regular charcoal or other grill was doing that. Um able to heat water, even had an ice maker during that time. So everything that was on the campsite that was in another little building, brought into the city, was able to use it, even with the portable shower. I didn't have the shower connected to a propane tank but I just kind of heated the water up and then poured the water into the little shower container thing and showered that way. So all those things were taken care of. So recovery still in that effect.

Barry Smith:

And I'm back on the podcast Awkward Behaviors, and again I still see that people have been dabbling on the site and I do appreciate that. So, moving forward, I am going to do this weekly. I've made up my mind and I have a lot of stories to tell over this past year. Starting with the next episode, we'll talk a little bit more about the pros and cons of off-grid or homesteading, and they're interchangeable, to be honest, and I think I mentioned one of the pros was really having all the stuff that you need, I mean having two generators, solar, solar panels, shower, internet, gas on hand. Because people were out of gas. And the irony is, with everything or a lot of things being closed to nowhere to go, people were still getting out to try to go get gas. To go where? So that was kind of the irony of people traveling, running out of gas, trying to find gas and I wasn't really sure where they were going to. So note yourself if you are in a hurricane and don't have to go anywhere, don't go out to get gas. And also, I would say not to stockpile but just have certain things on hand in your house. Can't say that enough. Like we always talk about having a to-go bag in your car or at work, there are some essential things that you still need to have in your house.

Barry Smith:

In preparation those, I upgraded my. I had a jack rated like 270 watts. I upgraded to something with about close to 2000. Uh, the jackery was really good for charging up um phones, computer camera gear, but not to. It couldn't even operate the ice maker. Ice maker required a little bit more power, so I actually ran it off the generator into a plug to operate the ice maker and a couple things like that. So I wasn't even using the inverter, I just pretty much used the generators to charge things, to build up the batteries or whatever else. So having two generators was the goat. I actually had to change out some things. I had to change the oil and the filter and the filter.

Barry Smith:

And right now one of my generators is on the bricks because the little pull thing that catches the the rope, it's just, it doesn't have any resistance, just pulls and pulls and pulls. So I'm thinking there's some type of sprocket or something in there that I need to fix. So that's on the bricks right now. So I need to get that fixed. And over the summer I did buy a portable air conditioner and, as I mentioned, with the other generator I had a 2000 watt generator. It was not sufficient to run the portable air conditioner so I had to use my brick or one for that, and that's the one that needs repairing right now. So that's the experience of the hurricane, the devastation, uh, the hurricane as we approach hurricane season again right now. Um, there wasn't anything I could have done to or anyone could have prepared for that. That's just Mother Nature at her finest. Just a reminder of making sure you're around people that you care about, and just making sure that you reach out to loved ones, not just on bad occasions, but often bad occasions, but often.

Barry Smith:

And I would recommend to anyone to definitely have at the bare minimum a generator and one of those little mobile generator boxes. I would say honestly, if you can afford it something, what about 2,000 watts? That way it could have more. I mean I have multiple. I have the small Jackery at 270, 300 watts and a larger one that has 18 to 2,000 watts. So I would say to anyone a minimum of 1,000, 1,500, or possibly 2,000. You can run a lot. And not to mention, I did have also the AC I'm sorry, the DC boat operating refrigerator, so that came in handy, but the house refrigerator I was able to run that off of the generator that was outside. So definitely invest in one of those portable generators.

Barry Smith:

Walkie-talkies I have a couple sets of walkie-talkies and the range is about 30 miles. So getting some walkie-talkies in your family, in your vehicles, just in case the phone lines go down, because you know how that can be. So a few recommendations just again. You can't have enough water, you can't have enough of those non-perishable items. I mean, if you like gummy bears, have some of those but small containers of the whether it's tuna or whatever you might like, in those cans and other non-perishables, uh, toiletry items, and just definitely prepare that to go back.

Barry Smith:

Have that definitely, um, at all times. Have something at work, something in your car just ready to go. It's just part of it. It doesn't take a whole lot. You heard me say before it only takes something like a telephone or power pole falling in your neighborhood and you can't get to your house from work and that's all it takes. You're scrambling around town or whatever for two to three hours or maybe more. Scrambling around town or whatever for two to three hours or maybe more. So if you had to get somewhere, um, I would definitely have that in my um trunk, just in case that's going to be it for this episode. Thank you guys. So much for tuning in to awkward behaviors. Again, next episode, I'm going to talk a little bit more about the pros, the cons, the good, the bad, the ugly about homesteading and living off grid. Until next time, take care of each other, thank you.