General
Mitigation describes things you do that are intended to avoid risk and are longer-term solutions. Not living on a flood plain falls into this category. You will find some resources to help you through this at the bottom of the page.
An Approach
When we talk about mitigation we are talking about taking steps to avoid being at risk of certain things. You can break this down into three major kinds of activities:
- Not getting into circumstances: This involves not putting yourself in more harm’s way than is necessary or unavoidable. It may mean not living too close to the coast where erosion occurs or not living on a flood plain.
- Being ready for certain circumstances: For example, having a transfer switch or generator hook-up installed on the house so there’s a way to safely connect the generator in case of a loss of power. It may also mean trimming back brush from the house in case of wildfires.
- Facilitating recovery or future activity: This may involve having alternate services available or configuring things in such a way that your actions to recover are not as challenging. This can overlap with preparation but only really applies to longer-term events.
Three Questions
There are three questions to ask yourself when you’re making longer-term preparations:
- Can I change the conditions or environment around me in a way that improves my chances?
- Are there certain aspects of preparation that I can do well in advance so that I have less work to do when preparing for an event?
- What can I have ready that will help me recover after the event?
For example, let’s look at boarding windows. We know that the windows aren’t going to change size. We also know that cutting the plywood down to the right sizes from their 4′ x 8′ sheets can take a while. We divide this task between mitigation and preparation. On the mitigation side, we label and store the windows with their fasteners at the end of the season. We’ll use them again next year. Our preparation that next year will be that much shorter because the covers will be ready for use right away.
Some Options on Mitigation
In this part of Nova Scotia, I have three major concerns: power, telecommunications, and transportation. Power can go out here for days at a time and I rely on it for a number of critical services (heat, septic, etc.). Telecommunications in this area can be tenuous on a good day but if it goes down, then I don’t have any way to get to emergency services. Finally, the road infrastructure here doesn’t have any real redundancy to it meaning that it is not inconceivable that there would be periods where people are cut off.
Insurance
First, this is a conversation you should have with your insurance provider or broker. You should not be relying on this as anything more than just some thoughts (I am not a broker).
Insurance is a bit of a “sticky wicket.” Understand what coverage you have, that is available, or that you don’t have. After Fiona, we saw all sorts of scenarios play out.
Fiona showed us how not to treat insurance in some ways. On one hand, we had a person promising lots of people that “they would have our backs” during the recovery period. This was in terms of getting things fixed and returning to normal. After a few months, we heard that many people were being disqualified from those programs because they chose not to purchase insurance. As an aside, that statement was pretty tone-deaf to the people on fixed incomes. If you had to pick two of three (from the list of food, fuel, or insurance), which would you drop? Get the facts straight from your coverage provider if you have one. If you don’t, talk to a broker.
The second part with insurance is keeping it up to date. If you make renovations and the like, keep your insurance company informed so that you know if the coverage applies or not.
Finally, understand what your deductible is and have that saved away somewhere.
Property
Good property layout may have the greatest effects but getting there can be challenging. This should take into account all the likely threats you can face. For example, you may want to live on the hill if there’s flooding, on the leeward side of where very high winds come from, and somewhere else for wildfires. This may involve having something like the space you need around the structure (wildfire), a gentle grade away from the house, then steeper grades further away. And remember, changes to grading need to take into account permits and the effects of drainage on neighbours, etc.
The resources at the bottom of the page can provide some assistance in figuring out what’s best for your particular circumstance.
Power
There are two parts to protecting against power-related issues. The first involves the loss of power entirely. That’s usually covered by generators. The second involves power surges and losses of quality of power that can affect sensitive equipment.
The first challenge that may people face involves trying to figure out what “size” of generator you need. An electrician becomes pretty useful at this point. You can start a very basic estimating process by visiting sites like the Nova Scotia Efficiency site (Energy Use Calculator) or many hardware stores have tools to help you estimate the size (Home Depot / Home Depot Wattage Worksheet, ). An online search can identify many that may be useful. That being said, consult with qualified / certified personnel and leave yourself a little flexibility.
Think of this as having rings of protection around your home:
- Have good surge protection power-bars for your sensitive equipment (like computers, and such). On the topic of computers, back up your data onto a removable drive as part of your preparations.
- Have an uninterruptible power supply that can connect to your internet connection (modem), router, switches, computer (and monitors), and telephone. These cover the time between when the power fails and when a generator kicks in.
- Have a longer-term source of backup power. These can involve portable generators (hooked up safety to the house through a connection point) or whole-home generators (like a Kohler or Generac). There are a number of options available. When looking at the connection point, there are several options available ranging from relatively simple systems to simply connect through the wall to systems like the Generlink.
Portable and Whole-Home
If you go with a portable generator, you will need to answer three questions:
- Will it generate enough power to cover off my needs (consider things like water pumps, pumps in septic systems, fridges, freezers, etc.)? Home Depot has a good calculator tool that can help you find the right size.
- Is it hooked up safely to the home? For portable generators, this will involve a connection point (where the generator plugs in) and a transfer switch. The transfer switch keeps electrical current from feeding back onto the grid where it can harm workers restoring lines, etc. Both of these should be handled by a certified electrician.
- The final part is fuel and having enough gas. Manufacturer instructions will give you a tank size and an estimate of how long it can run (usually at 50% load). There’s an excel spreadsheet on the resources page that may help with this.
If you opt for the whole-home generator, consult with a certified electrician. They will guide you on the size you need but leave yourself room. They key with these involves the fuel supply. You will use some fuel as the generator starts up every couple of weeks to run. Making sure you have enough fuel on hand is the other part. For mine, a 12kW generator, I generally have enough propane on hand for about 7 days of continuous run time. Get used to figuring out how much you use and when to call the suppliers. As a hint, the applications they use call at 30% which, for this kind of generator, may mean it runs out before the truck comes if you don’t call.
Telecommunications
Those of us on the Eastern Shore realize that telecommunications out here are not optimal. I use the term politely. Mitigation in this case is a bit more difficult. While you can maintain both a cellular phone and a landline, both can fail.
Mitigation in this case might become a cell phone booster that can help me reach the towers that seem pretty sparse out here. I have even considered setting up a small HAM radio that could reach emergency services if needed.
At the end of the day, the best you may be able to do is have a primary (landline) and secondary (cellular) phone service and then have an arrangement with the neighbours.
One thing that you could try (depending on your cellular service provider) is that if your landline is cut during the storm, using your cell phone as a hot spot to maintain connectivity. Be careful about data usage in this case and you will definitely want to talk to your cell phone service provider about any costs or limitations–some may even go so far as simply allowing the connectivity at no cost during the storm. That’s a conversation you would need to have with them.
Roads
If the roads are closed, there is relatively little to be done other than try to find another route. Mitigation in this case may well be more difficult and it may be that you’ll want to simply assume that you cannot really get anywhere for a couple of days after the event without facing some pretty significant delays.
A Routine – Keeping Tabs
Building small routines and habits can go a long way. While those that have lived on the Shore for a while have a pretty good sense of when the various issues are likely to arise, those that are new arrivals may want to remember the following:
- JUN to NOV: Hurricane season (don’t just watch for hurricanes but the post tropical storms as well)
- MAR to OCT: Wildfire / fire season. Get used to looking for burn restrictions during this time frame.
- Heavy rainfall can happen just about any time that there’s rain possible.
- Severe winds can come at about any time, ranging from hurricane’s to Nor’easters.
There’s a rough guide on setting something like this up on the resources page.
Day to Day Routines
You can also set up routines for things like fuel and the like. I keep a couple of extra cans of gasoline on hand just in case. You need to remember that gas is somewhat perishable, so if you’re going to do this, set up a routine so every couple of weeks you use the gas in the can (I just cycle mine through the truck) so that the gas is never more than a couple of weeks old (remember that Ethanol can lose its potential in one to three months while regular gasoline shouldn’t be kept over three months). This will help both keep your other equipment in decent shape while also keeping you from a situation of having to figure out how to dispose of “stale” gas.
| Some Links to Help Identify Mitigation Measures |
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| Protecting homes from forest fires (Nova Scotia) |
| Protect home against flooding (Government of Canada) |
| Living Shorelines and Living Shorelines Landing Page (private firm) |
| Climate Check Storm and Hurricane Mitigation |