Just a note...
My Nokia 9300 was a valuable piece of communication equipment during the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in Houston.
Besides the phone function, I has all contact information needed and was able to send email updates to those outside the area.
I also was able to access web information with the browser to assist in finding gasoline, ice and food.
I highly recommend signing up for emergencyemail.org to get very timely and informative weather updates--not just for before and during the storms, but also to know which creeks, bayous and rivers are flooding and which roads are impassible.
Though the voice channels were hard to come by and taken up by rescue and emergency workers, SMS messaging was very timely and data access GPRS worked pretty much throughout. There were some locations were cell towers were out, but we worked around these.
Despite not having television, I did a lot of reading using Mobireader and even used Tomeraider with a downloaded Wikipedia to read up on the Great Hurricane of 1900 in Galveston (it has a big entry).
Oh, and the display of the 9300 makes a fair flashlight when the power is out.
We finally had our power restored today and we're all grateful.
Glad to hear that you are well. That was a pretty bad storm.
How did you re-charge the 9300, if you had no power?
I have a wind-up torch in my car which has Nokia phone connectors for charging phones also, but I have never had to use it and so I'm not sure if it works or not.
Best wishes,
Martin O'Neill
[inserting another endorsement...]
My wife and I first charged our cell phones from the inverter inside our Black & Decker Storm Center (gel-cel battery, radio AM/FM/TV1/TV2/Weather and light).
When the battery in the Storm Center finally gave out (about two days), I used a 12 VDC inverter in my truck and the wife her car charger.
I shun normal car chargers as they tend to wear out your battery by charging "fast" instead of trickle. Sure enough, last night I had to order a new battery for the wife's LG-500VU as her current one is not keeping more than a couple of hours charge.
It also helped that I had a lot of camping gear from when my son was in Boy Scouts (propane lantern, stove, heater), 12 VDC TV/VCP and a 12 VDC fluorescent drop light.
ps. Let me explain regarding TV...I also had an old Sony Watchman that I had not yet discarded (due to the HDTV changeover coming in 2009) which the wife used to keep her amused, but almost all the channels were the same thing...showing damage in Galveston and depressing and not very informative. So after a while, TV was not much help. She and I both got a lot of reading in.
Any advertising by new members for blueunplugged will have accounts banned and posts deleted - this is due to spamming here and other forums by blueunplugged.