'I filled my bathtub with water' - getting through a blackout

When Monday’s unprecedented mass power outage blacked out the entire Iberian peninsula for nearly 24 hours, people reacted differently to the situation. While some already had their survival kits ready, others rushed to shops to stock up on batteries, candles, and flashlights. Meanwhile, others simply enjoyed a nice day in the sun, at the beach or reading a book.

“I didn’t work, which is nice from time to time,” explains Glòria, a hairdresser, while she enjoys her morning coffee at a sidewalk café in Barcelona. “I wasn’t really scared.”

Serendipitously, Glòria had left her home that morning with an old emergency radio, “you know, the kind with a crank and a solar panel,” to get it fixed. When the power went out at the hair salon, the whole team took their chairs outside and sat in the sun, listening to the latest updates on the outage on her newly repaired radio.

“It was a great moment to be able to say, ‘Wow, I had a radio on me,’” she says with a smile.

For Susana, her main concern was communicating with her teenage children.

“We’re used to having a phone and being able to control everything,” she says. But she “didn’t go crazy” buying things in the supermarket. She just carried on “as normal”, hoping “it wouldn’t be like the pandemic.” In the end, she said, “It was nothing, just a couple of hours, like a regular disruption."

Filling the bathtub and buying fuet

Although Stefan wasn’t as prepared as Glòria, he tells Catalan News, “When I realized it was at least a district-wide problem, I just filled my bathtub with water.” He then went to the beach to, in his own words, “consider his options.”

He usually doesn’t carry cash, but on Monday, he had twenty euros. With those in his wallet, he went to one of the few open shops to buy “fuet and chips and whatever I could consume right away.”

“I went to bed hungry,” he says with a laugh.

Someone who didn’t go to bed hungry was Valentina. When the power went out, she was in the middle of an online meeting with her university. She tells Catalan News that she went down on the street to see what was going on.

“Everyone was looking around and asking what was going on.”
When she realized there was a blackout, she went to a supermarket.

“I bought pasta, potatoes, eggs, water, and candles,” she explains.

Later, she ran into a friend on the street, and they decided to spend the day cooking together.

“I was relaxed because I don’t think I have the power to decide whether the energy will come back on or not,” she explains, adding, “I only have the power to prepare myself.”

Elsewhere in the Catalan capital, Bernardo bought “water, canned corn, and tuna,” as well as other foods that didn’t need to be refrigerated.

Meanwhile, Emma didn’t have any luck at the supermarket: “We wanted to buy candles, but the stores were kind of crazy, so we weren’t able to buy much,” she says. She tried to buy bread, but it was sold out too.

What to put in a survival kit? 

During the power outage, Emma, like others, thought about what she would put in her survival kit in case of a similar situation.

“I would buy some batteries and a radio. Definitely water, candles, and maybe some good power banks.” 

For Naomi, the power outage meant having to think about her medication.
“I have type 1 diabetes and I wear an insulin pump and a sensor,” she explains. Her first thought was that if her pump lost battery, she would be “in a difficult situation.”

“I had the thought that I need to get some backup insulin pens, which I haven’t used for years, but I need to have a little supply.”

Looking ahead to future power outages, Bernando would stock his survival kit with “a little bit of everything.”

“Handheld generators, a satellite phone, and battery chargers to power phones, laptops, and flashlights.

Around 7 pm on Monday, power began to come back on in Catalonia.

For Farid, it was a pleasant surprise. “We were very happy, it was like winning the lottery,” he says. He adds that “some people were a little scared” because it’s easy “to let your imagination run wild” during uncertain moments, such as the power outage.

EU 72-hour survival kit recommendations

In March of this year, the European Commission presented the EU Preparedness Union Strategy to prevent and react to emerging threats and crises. This included an outline of a 72-hour “survival kit.”

The kit should contain photocopies of identification documents, cash, a radio with batteries, a charger and a phone battery, a flashlight, a first aid kit, water, and food.