How much fuel on hand when Hurricane Harvey landed?

[zombieapocalypsegame]

I did a quick search on ZS but I didn't find such a post. I have to imagine this already exists - admins feel free to direct me to it.

How much fuel (gas) did you have on-hand when Hurricane Harvey arrived in Texas?

Feel free to count NON daily-driver vehicles as capacity too - but ONLY if you would be able to extract the gas using a simple siphon since many modern cars can't do so easily. And they had to have gas in them to count.

I had:

Three 5-gallon metal blitz cans of Unleaded
One 1-gallon plastic can half-full of Unleaded (lawnmower)
One 1-gallon plastic can full of oil/gas mix (weed eater)
Two 55 gallon steel drums cleaned for gasoline storage (but empty!)

But, I also had our RV and F350 neither of which are daily drivers. RV capacity is 35 gallons IIRC. F350 should be ~19 so I'd call that a 55 gallon drum equivalent.

[Stercutus]

I'm going to say for commuting an unlimited supply. My job provides the car and the gas and they have ways of getting it if everything is closed. The wife works at the hospital and if she can't get in for some emergency reason than they have to come pick her up and take her back home. The hospital also has some fuel reserves through the ambulance service but I don't know how much. Like in your other post first responders will typically call dibs on whatever fuel is available to provide necessary emergency services. If absolutely no one can get gas including first responders then commuting won't matter because everything will be closed anyway.

I'd have to go and double check but I think personally we had around 100 gallons of gas, 30 of diesel and 90 of propane. Since the pipeline issues a few months back I have kept everything topped off.

[fatty21]

I try to maintain 50 gallons in jerry cans. Rotating them out and refilling them once a year with preservatives. Im currently replacing plastic jugs with metal nato so i only have about half of that atm.

Fyi if u ever decide to use jerry cans to store fuel, dont waste your money on newer plastic ones. Just buy the metal ones right away, the newer models dont last like the older styles did.

I only got about 6 years out of the newer ones I purchased.

[raptor]

I keep 4 - 5 gallon gasoline cans full at home. I rotate one every 15 days so the oldest can will be 60 days old. This way I do not need Stabil in them and simply dump the can into a car before I fill it up and refill the gas can at the gas station. This is to provide one full tank of gas for a car or two half tanks for two cars that will be leaving for the farm.

At home, one generator runs on NG so inventory is not needed and the other runs in diesel. The diesel has about 100 hours of fuel which is not great but I got tired of having a fuel dump in the yard and got the NG generator. The plan is to run the NG generator (it is a smaller air cooled unit) most of the time and run the diesel generator only when I need more than 15kw to extend the run time for the diesel generator. The NG will run 1 large HVAC unit and the whole house or 1 large HVAC unit and the small HVAC unit but nothing else except lighting in the house.

My farm has a large propane tank for the house. I had planned to use it for a generator but since I had a spare diesel one I used it instead. It is small and has only enough fuel for about 36 hours of run time. So I have a couple of spare 55 gallon drums of off road diesel for the generator and other diesel equipment (w/stabil) and a single drum of gas (w/stabil) for cars. I planned to install a diesel fuel tank but getting that filled is a huge PITA. So I stuck to 55 gallon drums which can go into a pickup truck bed and get driven to the gas station to get filled. I simply hoist the full drum drum with a come along, move the PU truck and lower it to unload it.

[Halfapint]

Not in TX, however I have 4 5gallon cans, 3 1 gallon, and a full tank of gas in the car (16gallons) which is all premium. The truck had a full tank (50 miles on the tank) so 40gallons of diesel. If we were facing a similar situation and were flooded, the genny would be the only thing running its a Honda 3000w, so it should be just fine for a while with the amount of gas we have on hand.

[RickOShea]

The fuel shortages after Ivan & Katrina were bad enough. You couldn't find gas around here for a couple of weeks. Eventually the company had us get a few gallons for our personal vehicles from the fleet fuel pumps. The Gub'mint put out a waiver for using off-road diesel in road vehicles (so long as you paid the taxes later, LOL). I have a 200 gallon off-road diesel tank for my lawn mower and bush hog. I keep telling myself that my next vehicle will be a diesel, for the next Ivan/Katrina.

Up at the farm, the 14kw genny is hooked-up to a 250 gallon propane tank. The 7kw genny I have here at the house is a dual fuel, but I don't have a propane tank for it yet, just about a dozen 5 gallon gas cans. The spare vehicle usually has a full tank, and the daily driver I rarely let get below half a tank.

[Murgatroy]

I have a company vehicle with a company fuel card. It is my daily driver. I filled it up today at $76, and burned half a tank.

My secondary car has a full tank. I sees 1000 miles a year.

My project car unfortunately has a full tank. Which means I will probably have to drain it when she gets her new engine.

My bike has a full tank.

I don't know how much fuel my wife's car has. I filled it up last weekend.

I have a 5 gallon can in the garage.

Total on tap, if needed? We have 50 gallons?

[CrossCut]

150 gallons of gasoline, roughly. Have been maintaining/rotating that amount for about 6 years now. One 55 gal drum, four 6-gal cans, misc smaller cans, and the rest in the gas tanks of various vehicles/tools/toys (minus the BOV/daily driver). Not comfortable having less, and tried maintaining/rotating about 200 gals before that but it was a bit of a PITA.

~1000 gals of propane, three 500-gal tanks (one full and disconnected for emergency use only, two in use), two 100 lb tanks, and six 20 lb tanks.

We pretty much standardized our fuel types to gasoline and propane (and wood for heat) primarily. Reasonable people could disagree on the wisdom, just got burdensome to keep a variety of different fuels in sufficient quantity for a hodgepodge of different vehicles and appliances.

15 gal of K-1 kerosene, "Plan D" for heating and lighting. Plus a couple gals of lamp oil.

5 gal of white gas/coleman fuel

5 gal of off-road diesel. We don't use diesel much, mostly just keep the can full so it's not sitting there empty.

1.5 heating seasons worth of firewood, about 6 cords.

200 gals of 10-year old fuel oil (#2 grade). Need to do *something* with this, it was for a fuel oil furnace that I replaced (but kept) with ventless propane heaters. At the time it seemed like a good backup heat plan, but never needing it combined with a lot of procrastination has probably turned it from an asset to a liability now.

[raptor]

A little tip on where to buy fuel during a shortage.

If you look for a fuel jobber in your area these folks will frequently sell drums of gas and diesel. You will have to pick it up as well as either buy the drum or pay a deposit for it. The drum normally can generally be returned to back the deposit.

Not all jobbers will do this and many will require that you set up an account. However this is a good source for fuel if you have the ability to deal with 55 gallon drums.

[Dooms]

Running a gasoline generator and a gasoline jeep for 14 days during hurricane Sandy we went through about 140 gallons of fuel. I had to siphon it from old vehicles, it dangerous, messy, and we had all kinds of problems with the old gasoline.

After that I realized a few gas cans in the garage isn't going to cut it. Now I've got a natural gas standby generator plumbed into the natural gas service, a diesel backup, my truck is diesel, and I've got at least 1,000 gallons of diesel on hand at all times. Only real gasoline I keep on hand is for the chain saws and leaf blowers.

[taipan821]

Fuel

The fuel shortages after Ivan & Katrina were bad enough. You couldn't find gas around here for a couple of weeks.

for the week following TC Debbie, fuel wasn't available in the affected areas (we had to chainsaw a route for emergency vehicles) so there were a couple of incidents involving fuel siphoning (into a running generator )

I'm hopping in because, while this is for hurricane Harvey, down here in northern australia tropical cyclones (hurricanes) do happen. so
current fuels, petrol (gasoline), shellite, methylated spirits (alcohol but no tax)and hiking gas canisters.
Petrol I store a full tank (15 US gallons) as well as 4 20L (5 US gallon) jerry cans.
hiking canisters I have 6x 100g and 4 230g canisters on hand (stove)
shellite: 1 gallon (stove)
methylated spirit: 1 gallon (stove)

I even converted from metric to US gallons for you, aren't I nice

[grennels]

Question for Raptor -


"I simply hoist the full drum drum with a come along, move the PU truck and lower it to unload it."



How do you attach comealong to barrel?

[RickOShea]

Question for Raptor -


"I simply hoist the full drum drum with a come along, move the PU truck and lower it to unload it."



How do you attach comealong to barrel?

We have some drum tongs and slings at work, but out in the field we most often just use a choker strap.

[RonnyRonin]

I only had one jerry can in my backyard fuel cache (mostly due to some gasket experiments and problems with my newer MFCs) and told myself I'd go fill up at least two more (I have around 5 total, but still have some nagging gasket issues). Well, I waited until AFTER gas jumped $0.10 overnight, I thought I had a little more time as my area is usually a little insulated from fuel issues elsewhere in the country.

Now I'll know for sure how my gaskets are working...

[raptor]

As noted above they make drum straps and tongs designed to hoist drums. I use tongs. The come along is mounted to a cross beam.

You do not have to hoist the drum more than a couple of inches to clear the truck bed. Then move the truck and stand in the bed. Going down is a lot easier than coming up.

They also make drum dollies but it is easy to tip and roll a drum with practice.

Now a word of caution a full drum will weigh 450 lbs. So do take care when moving them.

[Zimmy]

I inventoried when the gas stations around DFW ran empty. Not great.

Full 5 gallon plastic POS jug I hate because of the stupid dispensing nozzle.

Full 5 gallon metal jug

Full 1 gallon jug

Two full qt containers in the hybrid that once held mixed gas.

25 gallons in the farm truck

5 gallons in the hybrid Honda

15 gallons in the jeep

3 gallons in the old 8n tractor

3 gallons in the generator.

Could have been better, certainly wasn't running on empty.