Empowered

PINOY KASI

Empowered

By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:22am (Mla time) 10/04/2006

Published on Page A13 of the October 4, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE morning Typhoon “Milenyo” struck, i looked for a barber for my father and then returned home, as winds blew and the electricity was cut off, to finish my column.

A few weeks back, I’d signed up with the British Meteorological Office for a free e-mail alert system (www.tropicalstormrisk.com), so I knew super-typhoon “Xangsane” (Milenyo’s international name) was about to hit, but it just shows you how we can end up underestimating our risks. The last super-typhoon we had was, according to the weather bureau, “Rosing” in 1995 and really, how many of us remember that? Let’s make sure we don’t end up disempowered again, sitting and grumbling in the dark, when the next disaster strikes.

Let me share some of the lessons I picked up dealing with Milenyo, specifically with the problem of not having electricity.

Lights please

It’s revealing how we Filipinos describe our power outages as “walang ilaw” [no lights]. We can survive the day without power, and we can cook with gas, but not having lights at night seem to represent the worst of a disaster, making the night seem so much longer (and do you notice how the squadrons of mosquitoes attack more viciously in the dark?).

Candles and kerosene lamps used to work quite well, and I guess they still have their place, but I’d avoid them if you have elderly people and very young children in the house. I prefer emergency lights with a rechargeable battery pack. I’d avoid those gadgets that try to incorporate all kinds of gadgets like a radio and a fan -- those will run out of juice within an hour or so and you’ll end up without lights, without sounds. (I’ll get back to the sounds in a while.)

But also be picky with the emergency lights. First, don’t get the ones that use regular batteries because they run out too quickly. Get one with rechargeable battery packs inside. Once you’ve charged them, they can last several hours.

The problem though with these rechargeable battery packs is that they’re still the nickel type, which has a memory effect, meaning that even if you’ve fully recharged them, they sometimes “think” they’ve run out of power. The manufacturers recommend that you fully recharge the packs and then use the lamps until they completely run out of energy, before recharging.

And that’s where we can run into problems. We tend to rush out to buy these lamps when there’s a power outage, and use them for a few hours. Once the electricity returns, we put the emergency lights in storage and forget about them. I guess we’ll just have to make it a habit to charge and discharge the emergency lamps.

One more point: It’s always tempting to buy a unit with long fluorescent lights. Here’s one instance where size does matter, and it’s the long ones that lose out. Get a lamp with one of those energy-saving, low-wattage bulbs. They’re small but last much longer.

Sounds please

Next to dark nights, what Filipinos fear most is quiet, the lack of “sounds.” And yet I was surprised to find, during Milenyo, how many of my friends didn’t have battery-operated radios at home. It seems the “transistor radio” has become a Stone-Age gadget.

I love radios and still keep several battery-operated ones. They’re important for keeping track of what’s happening, although with Milenyo, I realized that much of the AM band has been taken over by religious groups, with more sermons than news. The big networks offer news but can sometimes end up as strident as the religious broadcasts, castigating government, Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) and whoever else they can blame, adding to the seething frustration we all had waiting for the lights to come back. I’d advise you to tune in for a few minutes and then shift to some station with music.

You might want to invest in a radio with good short-wave reception, so you can listen to stations like the BBC. Better still, you might want to try Worldspace (www.worldspace.com) which uses satellite broadcasts to give you jazz, classical, rock, World music plus BBC, CNN and even National Public Radio (the only intelligent American radio network). I began to subscribe to Worldspace two years ago and it’s worked perfectly through many storms, including Milenyo. Worldspace does require a little antenna which has to be obstruction-free and sometimes that can be a hassle. I had an accident about two weeks ago when adjusting the antenna, literally sliding off the roof but landing, fortunately, on soft soil. Milenyo did dislodge the antenna, but this time around I got to fix it without any major incident, Tiny my dachshund fretfully running around on the ground and warning me to be careful.

Internet, please

If you can’t live without music, then make sure you have a reliable battery-operated player for cassettes (also Stone-Age?), CDs or MP3. Some of these electronic toys have long-lasting batteries.

Then, too, on the high end, you can use your laptop battery not just for sounds, but for videos. But laptop batteries are notorious for their short life, so if you’re really desperate, you might want to buy an extra battery (which could set you back a few thousand pesos).

We’re now getting to the ultimate question: Should you get a generator or not? During the “dark days” in the 1990s, when we had power outages almost daily, my father got a 5-horsepower, diesel-operated generator, but every time he tried using it, the dogs and cats would run berserk so it went into storage. My father then thought about getting a 40-horsepower silent generator, but that would have cost, prepare yourselves, a million pesos.

In the end, he got two local improvised generators that use a car battery. You charge it by plugging it into Meralco and the energy is stored in the battery. An invertor converts the energy back into regular electricity, with the gadget providing several outlets into which you can plug small appliances. The car battery generators had gone unused for some time and my father was ready to dispose of them, but when I replaced the old batteries with new batteries they worked quite well. And when Milenyo came around, the generators lasted three days with energy to spare. Each generator powered one light and one electric fan, while recharging batteries for my radios. Even better, I got to recharge my laptop three times to give me nine hours of computer use, including the Internet. I did worry about how steady the battery’s current might be, but -- knock on wood -- I don’t think it ruined the computer circuitry, considering I’m still able to do this column.

I haven’t seen these battery generators being sold lately, but I did spot some small solar generators at a hardware store in Makati City last year. I didn’t get them because I felt they weren’t cost effective; they cost from P8,000 to P30,000 each but could only power very small appliances. But in retrospect, maybe they’re worth exploring.

With or without Milenyo, we should be exploring these alternative sources of power.