This Is The Gear My Family Used In the Wake of a Natural Disaster

When Hurricane Helene hit, my family was forced to use our camping gear to survive weeks without power or water. Here's what worked.

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I’m not a prepper. I don’t own guns, I don’t can food, and I’ve never dug a bunker. If we’re playing the word association game and you say “stockpile,” I will respond with “beer.” But when Hurricane Helene devastated my hometown (read my essay about the experience here), I found myself wishing I was a bit more prepared for life with disaster gear and without modern amenities. We spent seven days without cell service, 15 days without electricity, and 18 days without running water. We still don’t have potable water and probably won’t for a while. It was a brief look at what life would be like without the basic things most of us take for granted.

I might not be a prepper, but I am an avid car camper, so I have a garage full of camping gear, some of which came in handy in the wake of this natural disaster. Here are the pieces of disaster gear that made the last couple of weeks without first-world amenities so much more tolerable.

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$469 at EcoFlow $419 at REI

I don’t have a backup generator for my house, so when we lost power on the first day of the storm (Friday, Sept. 27), we were thrust back into the dark ages. Fortunately, I keep the EcoFlow River Max charged and loaded for camping trips, and the 500-watt power bank gave us enough juice to charge phones, headlamps, lanterns, and my computer while allowing us the luxury of plugging in a single lamp each night. It has DC, AC, and USB outputs so it can charge whatever devices you can’t live without.

It doesn’t have the sort of surge power you need to operate a Kureg (I tried), and can’t power something huge like a fridge, but I can’t tell you how comforting it was to have a light on in the house. The whole family would gather around the lamp at night. At that rate of usage, the River Max had enough power to last for two days, after which I would charge it for a couple of hours at a friend’s house who had power. Leaning on a friend like that was a luxury a lot of people didn’t have, so I wish I had the solar panels ($279) to feed this power bank during the day.

Faucet: $100 at Dometic Jug: $70 at Dometic

This piece of disaster gear wins MVP of the disaster for me. We still don’t have drinking water in Asheville, but the combo of the Dometic Go 11-liter Jug and the Go Hydration Water Faucet has added a bit of civility to daily rituals, like washing hands, brushing teeth, or filling a glass with water. Just tap the button at the top of the faucet twice,, and a steady stream comes out. Tap it once and it stops. It’s super easy to use, and having water on tap is a hell of a privilege. Otherwise, we’d be fumbling with individual bottles or large containers when trying to wash hands or clean a dish.

The faucet is USB rechargeable, and it has held its charge for more than three weeks of heavy daily use. Water stations were set up throughout the city, so I could fill this jug, and a few others, to keep us in stock with drinking and washing water from the first day on.

$160 at NEMO $112 at Backcountry

My wife says she can handle any sort of difficulty in life, as long as she can take a shower. After 18 days without running water, I would also put “shower” near the top of my priority list. Fortunately, we had this Helio LX Pressure Shower to get us through. The system holds almost six gallons of water and pressurizes with a foot pump. Give it a minute of pumps, turn the nozzle on, and you’ve got running water. It doesn’t offer the water pressure you’d find at home, but if you occasionally give it a few pumps during your shower, you can get a stream steady enough to wash head to toe for several minutes.

It’s designed as a solar shower, so you can set it in the sun to warm the water inside, but I was taking most of my showers at the end of the night before bed, so any warmth gained from the sun was long gone. Instead, I added a gallon or so of nearly boiling water to take the edge off of each shower. You have to be careful though; I have a friend who burned a hole in his Helio by adding too much boiling water.

$399 at ROVR $399 at Backcountry

I originally got this cooler because it has wheels, and rolling a bunch of beers around is way better than carrying a bunch of beers around. But the ROVR came in clutch during our disaster because it gave us enough room to store some essentials from the fridge (like yogurt and cheese sticks) and kept them cool for days on a single bag of ice.

Maybe more importantly, the ROVR has a neat interior organization feature that you can load up with items you want to keep cold, but not get wet. Put your cans and bottles and ice in the main part of the cooler, and all your dairy and whatnot goes in the dry bin. No cooler is as good as a fridge, but the ROVR gave me a little piece of mind, because I knew that the cheese and sandwich meat I put in the dry bin wouldn’t get soggy and ruined.

$130 at REI $130 at Backcountry

I don’t think I’m addicted to coffee, but I’m not willing to go a day without it to find out. With no power, my fancy coffee maker was just an expensive paperweight, so I made coffee every morning on my JetBoil Flash, just like I do when I’m car camping. I’ve had this JetBoil for several years, and the thing still ignites on the first click every time. The boil time is fast, too (no more than a couple of minutes for a liter of water), which is important when you’re itching for your first cup of Joe in the morning.

$30 at Biolite $21 at Out and Back Outdoor

I wore this tiny headlamp around my neck almost around the clock for two weeks while we were without power. I have other headlamps, but this was my go-to because it’s unobtrusive and so light (it weighs just 50 grams), I barely knew it was on my body. It’s not the brightest torch (only 200 lumens), but it offered enough light for the myriad of situations that had me turning it on. I had to charge it every couple of days with the USB, but that was only during heavy usage.

$6 at Home Depot

Never underestimate the value of a good bucket. I spent a lot of time with these buckets—first hauling water from my hot tub into the back of my toilets so my family could flush, and then hauling water from a variety of other water sources in the neighborhood to do the same. You could buy Yeti’s version of the 5-gallon bucket, the $40 Loadout, which I have no doubt would be the most durable option out there. But I opted for cheap buckets from the hardware store, and they performed admirably, with no cracks, leaks or broken handles after weeks of heavy use.

Pro tip: If you find yourself in a similar situation when you have to haul water into your house to flush toilets or take a shower, just make sure you buy the lid with your bucket. Because losing half of your water on the commute from the water source back home sucks.

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