Disaster Preparation

I'm mostly unprepared for things that could happen. I'm OK with that.

Weapons don't help. The majority of stories you hear, are people accidentally shooting or killing others in disasters.

Hi again. I suppose I am woefully unprepared for a serious unexpected disaster, but then I'm woefully unprepared for many things that "could" happen. I tend to live by the seat of my pants (as my mother would say).

Bright side is, I'm nothing if not resourceful, and so far, so good.

(Knocks on wood and ducks)

So, when such an event happens, bring your whole fam to my house because you KNOW there'll be alcohol, good food, a few candles and a rocking poker game going on, roof or no roof.

:)

Well we have at least five kegs of beer, don't get excited they are corny kegs, still a good supply of beer and we have ten gallons in the fermentor at the moment so... Yeah, my husband brews beer. Bless his heart as long as we have water....

We also have what my older kids refer to as the food pantry, it actually looks like a food pantry so I can't exactly blame them for that moniker. It is not in preparation for a disaster mind you, we shop at Costco. :p

Both my husband and I are outside the box kind of people so we don't prepare for things, we just adapt when things happen.

We have guns, Troy hunts, they are in a safe near the food pantry though one had nothing to do with the location of the other. I bought him the safe as a birthday present and was too cheap to pay 300 bucks to have someone put it in place and that was where it ended up and where it will stay!

I always share, heck every summer there is a standing agreement that anyone can pick from our garden. We grow a lot more than we can ever eat! We have more than we need. Thing is though if it came down to my children starving and sharing, I am going to put the needs of my kids first and if I needed to use a gun to protect that decision I would. I really don't think that would ever happen though.

So far as prescriptions go, I have all the food! you can deal with my unmedicated ADD! :p

Water. That's the most important.

Quite frankly, if absolute disaster struck, I'd rather be one of those who dies fast. I don't want to be around during or after an apolcalypse. God knows that I'd rather be with Him than suffering so much that I'd have to decide whether or not to take another life to protect my food.

I don't believe that I will ever have to worry about this, so I only have a normal first aid kit, food in my pantry, and a water fountain service with 2 extra jugs.

By the way, nice to see you back, V.! Thanks for not giving up on us!

Dawn

We try to keep the pantry stocked and re-up on supplies when an extended outage is suspected. Our neighborhood also works together in trying times. Maybe I am idealist - but if someone came after me with a weapon for something I had, I'd be likely to tell them not to bother with threats, and share what I had. The one thing I am most glad to include is COFFEE (so much so that I might rethink my willingness to share it! lol ;).

We've got nothing, we would be part of the statistic.

Your red cross box is prob understocked with gauze I would get more. If there is major bleeding you will need a lot.

I have a list I keep of supplies, but I don't update it frequently enough. We've gone through power losses of a week and more and we did great. I know how to light our gas stove even if the power is out, we're on city water so we don't need a pump, I know how to cook with only the basics. I was making coffee and boiling water for all the neighbors when our power goes out. We don't have a generator and I don't want one, although that would be something we should probably have (even though they run out of gas and you still have a very expensive piece of metal). I hate when the electricity goes out and all the generators switch on -- they are very, very loud. We are, as a society, too reliant on modern conveniences. The best thing we can do to prepare is learn to do without.

I am always stocked up. I don't have special bins for disasters, but my pantry and freezer are always stocked enough to last a month or more. I always keep a case of bottled water on hand. My neighbours have a fireplace and a generator, and they have told us that in case of emergency we are to go there, so we would be sharing our stuff with them. They are also well stocked. We have no weapons, and I hope we wouldn't need any. Fortunately, we have never been affected by a disaster, natural or otherwise. The worst was being snowed in for a day or two, and that has only been a few times in the last 42 years. ETA: My neigbour makes wine and beer, so we have enough to last a year!

We have things which we check on each year in preparation for winter. We have been through some ice storms where we had no power for weeks.

* We have a generator.
* We have two kerosene heaters we can, and have, boiled water and cooked on. We were able to lend one to a handicapped neighbor when we found out he was trying to stay warm in his running van!
* We have a really cool thing that cleans water - and works without electricity.
* We have those light-weight metallic "space blankets" which have been life-savers for us, and which I tell my adult girls to keep in their car during winter months!
* We already have on hand fresh grains and legumes which we can boil up and eat, as well as food in the freezer, so I don't worry about the food stuff. Will it last us 6 months to a year? Probably not. We used to have more canned goods, but that was due to a well-stocked pantry.
* We all have our quirks and special needs. One of my kids used to need some medications, and to the best of my ability I "stockpiled" it, knowing that she'd be dead without it. For me - I always have.... lots of DENTAL FLOSS on hand lol!!
* You bring up the guns... ha ha .... I live in Kentucky. Most of us already have an assortment of weapons. I feel pretty safe in my neighborhood!

V.:

I am prepared. We have a storage room that has our emergency kits in it.
Our emergency kits include:
* First Aid kits (band aids, skin glue, antiseptic wipes, gauze, gauze tape, etc.)
* batteries
* Scissors/knives
* waterproof flashlights
* MREs
* can opener
* prescriptions and medications (allergy, etc.)

We have "go bags" or "bug out bags" for each of the family members and the dog. Each of our go bags have 2 sets of clothes in large ziploc bags, 3 MREs, a flashlight, a poncho and other items.

We have 2 weeks of MREs in rolling tub.
We have a compound bow and arrows
We have rifles and hand guns.
We have sleeping bags.
We have dog food and booties for our dog in case of glass and an extra leash.

I have a list of our items and expiration dates of those items. I check them quarterly and change out the clothes for the season as well. You can talk to the pharmacist about your emergency kit and they will work with you on that.

So glad to hear that you have lived in other countries where there was a desperate need and no one stole or flashed weapons...guess you were living overseas after Hurricane Katrina? People shot at the helicopters coming to HELP THEM...people were raped in "shelters", it took them 5 days to get drinking water to the people....then there was "super storm" Sandy...yeah...people were civil...okay.

Go to: http://www.redcross.org/prepare
this will tell you what you need, what you SHOULD have and what you SHOULD Do.

Think of it not as "disaster prep" so much as "inconvenience prep", IMO. We have been off the grid for a week and that taught us where were were good and where we needed to make adjustments. Our power company is craptastic and our neighbor nearly died while the company got people back on the grid during an outage during a heat wave. We tried so hard to keep her OK that our suitcase generator died.

You mention tampons. The other week I pointed out to DH that our secondary pantry had no feminine supplies so we went out and got some.

For medicines, talk to your doctor. If you can't get a longterm supply, ask what you can get. Make sure that you don't wait til you are almost out to get a new supply. You can often mail order medicines you need and plan ahead that way. I recently went through our meds and threw out stuff that was ages old.

You are asking a lot of good questions. You need to sit down with the adults in your household and decide things like, "What if someone tried to steal our stuff?" Or "What if all our relatives came here?" Friend had about 15 people in her home after Sandy stomped her area and people's houses were uninhabitable.

IMO, I'm not going to freak out about an EMP burst or zombies or whatever, but I've seen enough flooding, power outages, plumbing problems, etc. to know that a little prep can go a long way. Try to do everyday things like keep your cars at half tank or above.

The government has prep websites. It's tongue in cheek when talking about zombies, but it's serious on things you should look to have. And don't think you need to go out and buy a ton of stuff right now. Look at the little things you can use. Like, hey, Costco has fold down shovels you can easily store in your car. When I was in college, I was stuck in a surprise snowstorm and was afraid I'd be stuck there overnight. If that happened now, I'd have a blanket, some basic food supplies for myself and my typical passengers, a shovel, flares, etc.

And something to consider about the food. Yeah, you can eat food after the best by date, but you should really restock regularly. Something like a cardboard can rotator can keep you up to date, and make better use of those cans you buy on sale (I'm all for saving as much as preparing).

http://www.thecanorganizer.com/index.html

My big quandary is what to do with DD. She's 4. I don't want to freak her out, but we've done fire drills. I keep an old stroller in my trunk b/c I can't carry her for miles if we had to leave the car. I try to walk the line between being informed (and having her informed - she knows our full names, our address and our phone number as well as 9-1-1) and scaring her.

Think about backups to your backups. We are on a sewer system, so unlike our friends on a well, if we lose power we are OK for water - until the processing plant goes down and we can't get water from the city. So we have 20 gal containers in our basement. If we run out of that, let's hope the rain barrels are full of filterable water.

But what do you do when you are (for example) stuck on a disabled cruise ship for a week? Knowledge is power. A simple "how to" book might be really handy when you are not home.

I think it's important to strike a balance between reasonable preparations and panicking over things we cannot control. In 18 months, we've been through a huge blizzard, Super Storm Sandy (no power 48 hours), and Hurricane Irene (no power 6 days). We lose power all the time, and that means we can lose what's in our refrigerator/freezer.

We have non-perishable food and we check expiration dates every 6 months. If something is close to expiring, we donate it to the food pantry so it can be distributed quickly to someone who needs it, and we replace what we need. We have candles, lanterns, flashlights and a battery-tester. We have a simple radio so we can get news if our TV and internet are down. We don't have and will never have any weapons.We will not live in fear, and we will not have something that is more likely to get one of us killed.

Our neighbors help each other. When a storm is predicted, we fill pitchers with water so we can make our protein shakes, and we fill the bathtub with water so we can flush toilets if there's no way to get water pumped into higher elevations. We have kindling, firewood and blankets. We make sure we know how to get the garage door open if the electric door doesn't work, and we have gas in the car. We make sure our cell phones are charged. We make sure we have a first aid kit and supplies for the dog should we have to evacuate.

We also have a couple of headlamps (like what runners wear) so we can read books if the power goes out, and we have a Scrabble game and a deck of cards ready. When bad weather is predicted or has arrived, we check with our neighbors to see who needs what. Anyone with an empty garage slot opens it up to someone whose teenager has the 3rd car, anyone with a slow blower helps out the single mom or the elderly guy with asthma, teens are dispatched with snow shovels to dig out the hydrants so that, God forbid there's a fire, the firefighters can actually get to the water. Big kids turn off their computers and take the little kids sledding on the hill in the neighborhood. People dig out each other's mailboxes and help with the pile of snow the plows leave at the end of the driveway.

We also learn to sit tight, and to figure out what we can really do without.

I buy 2 inhalers for my son every time he needs a new one! It started out needing multiple inhalers at different places (2 homes... Plus having them in easy reach in multiple locations at home -upstairs, down, etc-, backpack, 3 cars, school, daycare, grandparents. That's a LOT of inhalers just for the basics. Now that the backups are in place, I still stockpile them.

Ditto steroids & antibiotics, just not in such profusion! But having them on hand in normal times is the difference between stomping on an illnesss eay or being hospitalized for weeks.

In the event of a true apocalyptic style emergency? My FIRST stop would be at "our" pharmacy. My next would be GlaxoKline distribution sites (and every hospital & pharmacy on the way. I only have enough on hand for about 6 months. A lifetime supply? Well, that's whatever I have on hand. So Id better have a lot.

That's my #1 priority.

As far as standard disaster prep, I'm a bad Mormon. I struggle to feeds us each week, and am a year out from being caught up on bills (that my ex stuck me with, but going to court would cost more than the bills.).

So "everything else" will have to wait until I'm solvent.
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Something people tend to forget (that having lived & worked "in the field" are VITAL?

- Tampons
- Birth control

I don't necessarily prepare for a disaster, but I do keep extra stuff around for power outage and things like that. We have a fireplace and we have had to burn wood to keep the house warm so i make sure we have a wood pile. I have 4 kids in the house so we keep well stocked on staples. Usually I buy meat in bulk, like half a cow. I grow a garden in the summer so we can and freeze a lot of stuff. I buy fresh fruit in bulk from a local trucker when it is available. These are things I do all the time that would probably help. I also am comforted by the fact that I have a friend who owns lots of milk cows. I figure I can trade for milk. These aren't things I dwell on but they are things that cross my mind. I figure any hardship is a test in faith so I really try to increase my faith so that I will be prepared when something hard comes along.

Water

Non-perishables (canned, bars, tuna, crackers, peanut butter,
can opener, Swiss Army knife, etc)

First Aid Kit

Flashlight -lots of batteries

Some form of self defense even if it's a bat.

Warm blankets, warm coat, sweatshirts etc.

Canles, matches