Heat and Light: Alternatives to electrical power, natural gas, and other commercial means of heating and lighting homes. The need for alternatives exists because various disasters often interrupt commercial utilities. You should therefore plan ahead to have other means to provide heat and light for your home.
Heat can be provided by a modern woodburning stove, a heat circulating unit in a fireplace, white gas or propane camping stoves, canned-heat, chemical heat, heat-tab stoves, solar heating units, and other options. Select the best alternative heating method for your situation. Store a reserve of fuel so you can keep it working to provide heat. Depending on the option selected you will need white gas, propane, coal, wood, water, newspaper or commercial logs, or any other fuel appropriate to your emergency heating system. Take care in selecting firewood. Hardwoods such as apple, ash, beech, birch, dogwood, hard maple, hickory, locust, mesquite, oak, Pacific madrone, and pecan are all excellent and they have a high relative amount of heat. Softwood trees such as Douglas fir and southern yellow pine are good but smoky.
Flashlights generally provide the best emergency lighting during most disasters. This is because they are easy to use, and they do not give off a spark or flame which could ignite leaking gas. A 6 or 12-volt battery powered lantern will burn more than 24 hours. Alkaline cells have a shelf life of more than one year. You can easily and safely keep a reserve battery on the shelf to replace the old one. When there is no danger from leaking gas, you can also use candles, floating candles, camping lanterns, chemical lights, gasoline powered generators, or other options. Make sure that you have the fuel, parts, supplies, batteries, and other items needed to keep these light sources working. Store tuel in a safe place in a safety approved container.
