Essential tools | snow throwers | power generators

When we first moved into our current home, we decided to buy a snow thrower. I forgot the reason why we were so adamant about buying it when the snow fall in those days in New York was minimal and blizzards were infrequent. Hence the new Toro  snow thrower sat underutilized in the garage for a few years.

Then, one year, the blizzard arrived and the snow thrower was promptly put into action. Over 20 inches of snow fell on that day and the thrower worked beautifully saving us many hours of manual snow removal not to mention also backaches !

Before the blizzard arrived, the weather forecast had already filled the airwaves warning about the impending blizzard. Homeowners rushed to buy the snow throwers, shovels and salts. These items were quickly out of stock.

Hence we were fortunate that we had the snow thrower handy to help us dig out of the snow storm.

With the recent Hurricane Irene that hit the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., many areas were flooded and the power was down. Many of our friends experienced power outages. In fact, a week after the storm had passed, a few thousand households in Long Island still had no power.

So now the latest must have "tool" at home for these unexpected events seems to be the power generator. A friend just bought the Champion Gas Powered Portable Generator to serve as a backup power source. Now we are thinking of investing in one ourselves. During this past hurricane, we were fortunate that we did not suffer any outages. However, one could never be over prepared for such an emergency.

We definitely didn't want to be in the same shoes as the one million plus residents of Southern California who recently lost power due to human errors in the San Diego Gas and  Electric operations.