Seven Things You Must Do to Prepare for An Emergency |
31 Comments |
Last weekend San Francisco encountered a huge storm. Prior to that, the news buzzed about how it was the worst storm in more than two years. It was difficult for me to take news of 6-9 inches of rain seriously. I grew up in Boston where there's often a foot of snow at a time. While that storm did not impact me, the threat of an earthquake always looms in San Francisco. We know we need to be ready in the case of an emergency.
If you want to succeed at any venture, the first step is to have a plan. Here are some steps we are taking to be prepared:
- Buy an Emergency Kit - We went out and purchased this one
. It has everything that the American Red Cross suggests for two people to live for three days. If you want to really safe, you might want to consider this deluxe version
- Buy an Emergency Radio - We haven't pulled the trigger on purchasing a radio yet, but we will soon. I have my eye on this radio
- Buy a Multi-tool - This can be either a Swiss Army knife or a Leatherman-type tool. For less than $10, plus shipping, I like this cheap version
- Buy Extra Miscellaneous Items - My kit didn't include a way to start a fire; waterproof matches
- Prepare Important Documents and Irreplaceable Items - If you have to evacuate your home in a hurry you'll want to gather a birth certificates, social security cards, house and car deeds, and passports. I would look to have a portable hard drive
- Upload Important Data to the Internet - We will not grab our wedding album - or any pictures in our home for that matter. By having all our pictures uploaded to the Internet, we can retrieve them when the emergency is over. It can't hurt to scan copies of all the documents mentioned above and upload them as well.
- Have Emergency Cash Available - If there's a true natural disaster, you might find that your credit card and check book aren't accepted. A couple of hundred dollars could go a very long way.
Now that I have a plan, it's simply a matter of execution. Putting all the above supplies together should take only 2-3 hours and less than $200. I have only one problem. Where do we store the final kit? Do we store it in our home and hope that in an earthquake, there is time to grab it and go? Or should we store it in one of our cars? In the later case, we can immediately get out with just our car keys and not have to worry about something collapsing on our heads.
Is there anything that my emergency plan is missing? Where would you store your emergency kit?
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Wow, I totally needed this article. I haven’t thought at all about preparing for emergencies. I live in New York. I thought the worst that could happen here is a blizzard. But a couple of months ago, a tornado (the first one in NYC in 80 years) tore through my neighborhood. I’m okay, but I can’t pretend that NYC is invulnerable any more. But even after the tornado, I didn’t think about an emergency kit at all!
The First Aid kit you linked to has glowsticks, but I definitely recommend a flashlight with extra batteries. My boyfriend and I bought a tiny one with an extra bright bulb. It would take no room at all to stash it and a pack of AAs.
Also, I don’t think anyone really needs to have an emergency bunker with canned beans and pallets of water, but it’s probably a good idea to have a couple jugs of water around the house.
I’d keep it somewhere accessible in the house. For one thing, you may be trapped in the house (think flash flood). For another, someone might steal your car if things really got that bad.
I’ve never been in an earthquake. But I was in downtown NYC for both 11th Sept and the big blackout. Some things I learned from those experiences:
* CASH is king! When you need water, radios, etc from street vendors you need fives and dollars.
* You may be in your office when an emergency strikes (I was in both cases), in which case the most deluxest kit in the world won’t help if it’s in your bedroom closet; so have some kit at work.
* Have a pre-arranged plan with the spouse/better half about where to meet the day of or the day after for situations in which the cellphone system melts down. Also, phone cards for public phones are handy when the cellphone won’t work.
* Keep flat shoes at work! Walking all the way uptown in heels to escape blackouts, floods, whatever is a nightmare! I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this Lazy Man.
* Know where the torches are kept in your office building and at home.
* Keep a sense of humour about you. You will look back and laugh at that time you spent all night out on 96th street grilling sausages with a bunch of strangers.
The power went out for about 40 hours at my place in SF. I had no radio and a short supply of candles, no land line..Couple of trees and stop signs went down in my area. Overall still manageable, but I definitely need to be prepared for something really big like an earthquake. I like the idea of uploading important stuff to the internet, where it could be backed up etc. Some stores sell emergency hard drives but I don’t see how thats any different than storing file on your computer. Great post!
Food and water. Living in CA, as Lazy Man does, we have tons of stored food and stored water in our house in case “the big one” hits and we cannot get out.
Also, be sure to always keep your gas tank at 1/2 full, because if the power grid goes down, a lot of gas stations will be out as well…
I only know of two people who have actually used a 72-hour kit (thankfully neither I nor my wife have), and both of them recommended keeping it in the car (or at least in the coat-closet nearest the car). Last year my friend’s apartment building caught fire in the middle of the night and the firefighters told everyone to get out of the building. His wife had just organized 72-hour kits for a group of us (if you buy in bulk they cost as little as $10/person for first aid, food, and raingear) and still had their own kit in the trunk of their car. My friend said that even though they had just spent a few days thinking about emergency preparedness and assembling a dozen or so emergency kits, in the heat of the moment (and the middle of the night) they just went on autopilot, grabbed their kids, got in the car, and went to the safety point without going back to the bedroom closet for daytime clothes or grabbing obvious stuff like extra diapers, water bottle, radio, etc.
At the community location, there were a few items in high demand. Adults can cope with an emergency for 12 or 24 hours; kids, not so much. So children’s snackfoods, children’s socks/shoes, and simple games (e.g., a deck of Uno cards) were the biggest hits. A few other people had emergency kits with stale crackers/fruitsnacks, so don’t forget to refresh your food every year or so (my family eats ours the same day we replace smoke-detector batteries and review our meetup plan, the first weekend in April).
Wow! plexluthor is really prepared! I don’t even have a flashlight in my apartment! I have a car emergency kit in my trunk (flares, flash light, batteries, blanket, etc), but I don’t have anything in my apartment. Maybe I’ll have to put something together…
My wife and I have about 20 canned meals (Stew, Think and Chunky Soup ect.) in a drawer in the house. Which is probably enough for good for at least a week maybe two with the rest of the pantry.
If DC shuts down for a major disaster, three days might not cut it. My guess is by a week or two either we’ll need to leave or things will back to normal
Another point is at the end of a year, we will donate all the cans to food bank and resupply. We did the purchases near Sept 11 so should be easy to remember. So basically we protect against not having access to food for a week and donate to a food bank.
If you start worrying too much about what you need, it may never end. If you start thinking about where to put it, you may also realize that there is no perfect place. The car may get broken into or stolen (then someone else has all of your documents - perfect for identity theft). You can keep it in the basement but what about a terrible flood. The bedroom might be too far into the house and you wont be able to get to it in an emergency. What if you are at work?
Then you have to factor in Murphy’s law of whatever can go wrong will go wrong. With all of that, just try and be prepared up to a certain point without driving yourself crazy and then hope for the best. You can never be 100% ready for every situation.
Great article, Lazy Man. I strongly recommend having a list of all allergies and medications as well. I second the recommendation for having a computer backup of all important files, cash and a leatherman. I love those tools!
Your kit has no water in it. You might be in trouble after a day. How are you on food? Given the nature of earthquakes, I would store it outside the house or at least under a roof that you can physically remove in case it comes down. Head over to equipped.com . He has a lot of good advice including how to make kits.
Umm, it says it has food and water.
I agree, with earthquakes you get no warning so it’s extra important to always be prepared. We have several hand-crank radios (and flashlights) but I like the radio you’ve linked to with the cell charger. We’ve backed our favorite pictures up online, but we’ve also gotten an external hard drive that we can just grab and go (with thousands of songs, important word processing files, etc.). I’ve also been meaning to scan our important documents and put them on a flash drive that will go into the backpacks we have prepared for emergencies. Finally, I recommend a stash of cash since there’s a good chance electricity will go out and credit cards won’t be accepted. I have some hundreds but mostly 5’s, 10’s and 20’s in my stash.
If you have a yard, especially in California, your e-kit should live outside, in a shed or storage locker. Earthquakes can start fires and otherwise wreck houses. If you live in an apartment, keeping at least a part of your e-kit in the car is probably a good idea.
We keep our e-kit (MREs, water, first-aid kit, crank radios, etc) in the backyard, along with our camping gear so we can pitch a tent and boil water if we need to.
You may want to consider putting together two or three kits as funding allows. It’s a good idea to keep one kit at home, one in the car, and one at the office as you never know when/where disaster will strike. Case(s) in point: I was caught in an earthquake at my office, snowed in for a week at home, and had an unplanned overnight stay at a motel hours from my home because the freeway was shut down due to flooding.
We were stuck without electricity for 3 days in July, some people may remember news reports of the bulk carrier the “Pasha Bulka” being washed up on Nobby’s Beach in Newcastle NSW Australia, because of massive storms, and we also had major flooding. My daughters and I learned a lesson during those 3 days and we made what we call our “Mighty Storm Box” in that box we’ve got matches, candles, non perishable food, torch and spare batteries, a battery operated radio, a cell phone charger which uses batteries, and a phone that doesn’t require electricity, just a simple $20 phone from Kmart, our usual phone is cordless with an answering machine so it couldn’t be used while we were without electricity. We also have board games and cards :)
Good list. I agree about the hand cranked radio. It was indispensable after hurricane Katrina (I’m in MS).
survival kit should meet: food/water, shelter, fire, signaling, first aid.
food/water: seasonally and activity level dependent. pack some oral rehydration salts or at the least gatorade.
shelter: seasonally dependent, but the key is protection from the elements and heat retention.
fire: purifies, heats, signals, light
signaling: self explanatory, but also should includes personal identification.
first aid: most people don’t look through their first aid kit after getting one, so they don’t know what they have or don’t have, and what they actually need. most situations only require simple dressings for cuts and scrapes and personal medications.
i’d recommend a batteryless flashlight in general, but i would recommend having a headlamp, too. cordage and tape are important. you should have fire extinguishers in your car and also in your house (and know how to use them).
Where to keep the kit?: your safe room in your house.
i recommend people vacate california. that place is going to fall in the ocean before long…
I want to second what david said, about keeping the gas tank half full.
I lost my home in a tornado. I now have a pretty major emergency kit designed to accomodate a variety of emergencies.
The single most important item: a flashlight on my keychain. You’re sunk if you don’t know what is going on around you.
Also, maintaining good health is part of your emergency prep plan. Katrina was very bad news for those in poor health with limited mobility. After the tornado hit my home, my car was covered in power lines and trees, and the street was unpassable. I walked miles that night.
I would advise putting your important documents on a flash drive, not a hard drive. You could attach it to your keychain, and it isn’t a big target for theft, unlike the high-value, easily-snatchable hard drive. The last thing you want is a thief getting a copy of all of your most important documents.
I read somewhere that you should include your pet’s shot records with the emergency papers in case you can find a place that will board the pets during the crisis.
I’d also say have an address list for relatives, etc. So many of us use electronic communications that we don’t have the physical addresses or phone numbers memorized.
And at the risk of sounding too graphic: if you or anyone in your household is within childbearing age, your emergency kit should contain emergency contraceptives. It’s scary, but catastrophic emergencies really shake the infrastructure and can result in increased crimes, including sexual ones. And you can’t expect that you’ll have quick access to medical attention. You can get this from the gyno or Planned Parenthood. Just my 0.02.
Another thing to consider keeping on hand is a cache of liquor and cigarettes (even if you don’t drink or smoke). In the event of a protracted emergency, these can be valuable trading commodities.
After reading the post and comments, I can see I have some work to do.
I used to have one of those crank radios, it didn’t work too well. And, in this day of centralized media, you can’t necessarily count on the local radio stations of being of much help anyway (although during Rita New Orleans’ local all-news radio channel apparently did yeoman services.) I would supplement it with a regular battery-operated radio with a large stock of spare batteries: Sony, Grundig and Sangean make very nice units which run on a few AA-cell batteries.
Although I lack both these items myself, a cell-phone and laptop are both useful… during Rita, the cell-phone network came back up before the landlines, and there was some internet access available to refugees.
Thank you so much for the great post. You have really got me thinking. Thanks to all the people who left comments too. I have got tons of ideas of what I am going to pack in my kit. I added a few things too including duct tape.
Great topic and great post. I think Lucky makes a good point that you can never be truly prepared for a disaster and anything can go wrong with getting access or use out of your emergency kit, but that doesn’t mean having one isn’t a good idea.
A few things to mention:
1) You should have a good fireproof/floodproof safe (or cabinet) in your house where you can store valuables and important documents. Even if your house falls down the safe will remain intact.
2) I hate to say it but a great thing to have in an emergency is a gun. I’m not a gun person at all. I don’t own one but when I get married, have a family, and buy a home I think I will and just keep it in a secure location. In a big disaster you don’t know what might happen. People may begin looting, going crazy, whatever.
3) LazyMan asks a critical question - where do you put the kit? I guess there is no easy answer. I would probably buy multiple kits (or just make them, you can buy all of that stuff separately for around $20 instead of paying $90 for the kit/backpack). I would leave a kit in each car as well as one for each person in the house. I think you should train everyone in your family that if there is an emergency they should grab their kit as part of your evacuation plan. I can’t think of where in the house you should keep them. Should you put them all in one place that seems like a good place (e.g. by the door)? But that might be bad because if that one area of the house is obstructed than all the kits are gone. Should everyone keep their kits in their rooms? Probably not a good idea for quick access in an emergency. So I don’t know. I guess you have to make up one primary evacuation plan and whatever that is put it by that door.
4) Cash is definitely king. I would keep at least a couple of thousand dollars in $20s in a secure place. Maybe your car, maybe your emergency kit, I don’t really know.
5) After you know you have the basic neccessities like food, water and first aid for your family the next two critical things are probably a form of communication and transportation. I love the idea of the emergency radio with hand crank and cell phone charger. Who knows if cell phones will even work. I live in Manhattan and during 9/11 I couldn’t make a single call on my cellphone.
6) IDENTIFICATION. During any disaster make sure to have your ID on you.
7) The main thing I think is to have a game plan for your entire family. It should be simple in the sense that it can work under a variety of scenarios. For instance it is good to have a central contact person who is geographically far away. If you live in NYC and have a relative in the midwest, let everyone in your family know that in the event of an emergency if they are separated and can’t contact each other they should contact that relative. And that relative can coordinate a place for everyone to meet. Picking a pre-arranged spot isn’t too helpful given you will never know what areas will be reachable.
This is a great article.
So much to think about and all the replies are very informative as well.
I thought that we were prepared, but I can see we need to think about a few more items.
I will bookmark this so I have a list to double check when I add to our disaster kit.
I don’t think I saw these mentioned:
Your old eyeglasses (better than nothing!)
Copies of drug prescriptions
Always have a picture of each family member (including pets) on you, in case you need to make a “missing” poster.
Quarters (phone cards may do you no good if computer networks are down.) There aren’t many pay phones around but they may be all that’s working.
Designate one out of state contact each family member should call to say they are ok, and so you can locate each other. Make sure your children know this number.
I think you must consider the possibilities for where you live. In my case, I must prepare for tornadoes and the possibility of a winter power outage, but we don’t get earthquakes or hurricanes.
And you should get inventoryBuilder to store you documents and to have all your inventory
http://www.inventorybuilder.com
Great topic, a perennial favorite of mine! (emergency nerd?). I would keep one for the car, one for the house. Perhaps a smaller one for the car. mrs.Micah’s point is a good one, that someone might steal the car (but this could happen anwyay). You could also add stocking up on food supplies in case you have to remain inside.