Emergency Preparedness

What do eBikes have to do with Emergency Preparedness?

By Richard Lewis

We live in an area of Southern California very close to several major earthquake faults and also in an area where there is a wildfire risk. While our area has one set of risks, in almost every area around the country there may be combination of different risks of emergencies including earthquakes, wildfires, floods, tornados and other extreme weather events. Of course, there is always a possibility of terrorism impacting our infrastructure. 

Authorities have told residents in our area that in the event of a major emergency they will need to solve their own issues for about 7 days before they can expect any help from outside. You may not be able to pick up the phone and dial 911 for help. The obvious things we might need will be food and water but pretty quickly after that there will be additional issues.  The power grid may be down. The highway infrastructure could be damaged or overloaded.  In an emergency situation there are several needs that you will have, depending on the nature of the emergency. Two critical ones will be transportation and electrical power. 

Did you know that during the August 2023 firestorm that destroyed the town of Lahaina, Hawaii, some people were able to ride their bikes and eBikes to evacuate the area while motorists were trapped due to the traffic and road closures? Here, in California, we met a Caltrans highway engineer a few years who was known for carrying a folding bike in the trunk of his car. When asked why he always seemed to have his folding bike with him he answered, "You should be aware that in the event of a major earthquake in Southern California a certain percentage of the overpasses are going to collapse onto the roadways below and leave you trapped on the freeway and side roads. With a motor vehicle, you will probably be able to drive only about 2 miles before you encounter a road blockage from missing sections of the freeway or overpass debris that has fallen onto the surface streets below. "  He was planning to have his bike to give him a transportation option to get home or to get him to safety, if his car was disabled.  So in an emergency, an eBike could give you a valuable transportation option. If we keep our bikes fully charged and ready to ride at home or at our commuting destination, we would have a 20-50 mile bug-out vehicle that can get around traffic, road closures, fallen trees or other road debris.  This might be a whole other reason to consider getting a secondary battery for your eBike so you could have a longer cruising range or could go on multiple rides without having to recharge if grid power was not available. 

Also, our eBikes have a pretty significant sized battery and some of us use a secondary battery.  Depending on your bike, you could use your eBike battery to charge cell phones, power emergency lighting and power home medical equipment, for a time.  Using a power source like a Goal Zero 1500 or Jackery Explorer 1000 would give you an offgrid power source to recharge your eBike batteries using some solar panels. Using a 48 volt AIMS  Pure Sine Wave Inverter with the proper power adapters (like the ElectricAllWheel Factory External Battery XT60 Adapter) you could power all kinds of 110 volt household and electronic devices from your Lectric or other 48V eBike batteries.   Some bike models like the Aniioki brand are coming with power ports that connect directly to a 1000W inverter.  

Note: If you are a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Program Volunteer, you can immediately imagine the advantages of having a regular recreational eBike or a Cargo eBike available to help get emergency supplies and first aid assistance quickly to where they are needed in your neighborhood.  Add a flatbed cargo trailer to your ebike and you would have mobile capacity for the canopy, folding chairs, first aid gear and other essentials of a small CERT Volunteer team. Also, adding an ebike as a potential clean, quiet power source to recharge radios, flashlights and other electronics could augment generators and other portable power stations.