What You Should Actually Keep in the House for Hurricane Season in Lahaina

You started the morning under blue skies. Now Tropical Storm Moke is slowly rolling in over west Maui and you wonder what you can do differently this time, with only hours to spare.

Because what you had in the house before Lala and what you actually needed during Lala turned out to be two different things. And the gap between them wasn’t really about supplies. You had food. You had candles. You had water. What you didn’t have was information. And that’s the part that actually spooked you. Standing in the dark not knowing what was happening past your front door.

YOU HAD.

Candles. Charged lanterns. Food in the fridge and pantry. Even solar power. Charged phones. Board games to pass the time. A fully charged electric car.

Here’s what you didn’t know before you found yourself sitting in the dark. Power went down on the west side, unbeknownst to you, sometime in the early afternoon and the early onset of the storm. No alerts. No notifications. Just down. You were unknowingly pulling from your backup solar power all day. Running the dishwasher. Doing laundry. Even the AC was on. Burning the resource you needed most, without even realizing it.

YOU NEEDED.

An independent way to receive information that didn’t depend on a shaky cell phone tower. Maui County says that in a serious disaster, radio may be the best way to get news. There is a NOAA station broadcasting right from Haleakala on 164.400 MHz. You’d had a car radio. You didn’t have a battery or hand-cranked radio in the house.

You also needed to understand your own solar power system. Specifically, how to see grid failure and how to move in to conservation mode before the storm rather than during it.

And you’d needed a plan for the refrigerator that started before the power went out, not after. An unopened refrigerator holds safe temp for about four hours. A full freezer roughly two days. You should have made everything colder in advance and put important items in the freezer. Before you lost power.

It also used to be that three days of supplies were suggested by Maui County before a natural disaster: water, food, meds, the basics. Now, the standard is two weeks. You may have been prepped for two days.

WHAT YOU’RE CHANGING

Before Moke arrives, this is what you are doing differently:

You are assuming that the grid will fail. You are moving in to conservation mode ahead of the storm, not after it.

You are checking your solar battery monitor and making sure that you understand exactly what it is telling you.

You are fully charging everything: phones, power banks, lanterns, the car. While there is still time to do it slowly. Instead of scrambling.

You will put a radio in the house now. One that does not need a cell tower or car engine to work.

You will set temps on your fridge and freezer colder. You will freeze water. You will stage coolers.

You will keep some cash on hand. Because the last storm taught you that a functioning credit card reader is not something that you can count on.

Lastly, you will put the plan, the actual info, contacts, what to do and when, on paper. Not just on a phone that may or may not give out on you when you need it most.

None of this makes Moke or the storm expected a week from today or the next one after that any less scary. This list just means that you are not going to make the same mistakes twice.