When Preparedness Becomes Personal

By Darla Isackson

Joy and Wyldn Pearson live three houses from me and are good friends. Their daughter and son-in-law were hunkered down in their Houston apartment while Hurricane Harvey raged all around them . . .  and for days afterwards in the aftermath, unable to get to a store. Joy told me that last Christmas she had a box of preparedness stuff to give them, but was afraid they would think it was silly and decided against it. It’s an understatement to say Joy wishes now that she had followed through with her good intentions. 

Another neighbor has a daughter whose family, including three young children, live in Florida and were in the direct path of the storm there. They stayed put, but lost power and found how difficult life can be with small kids and no electricity. A Hispanic friend has many family members in Mexico whose well-being was in question for days after the earthquake. People who live not so many miles from me in Utah had to evacuate recently when fires threatened their neighborhood. Some of them lost their homes.

If the need for preparedness hasn’t been personal for me before, it is now! I no longer think “It could never happen here.” Although I’ve been working on preparedness sporadically for decades, I know the time has come to see what I really have in place and what I still might need to do.

Levels of Preparedness 

Here’s a short list of food storage items a person would need for basic survival for a year: 

• Grains: 400 lbs. (including wheat, flour, rice, corn, oats, pasta, millet, rye, etc.)

• Legumes: 60 lbs. (including dry beans, split peas, lentils, etc.)

• Powdered Milk: 16 lbs.

• Cooking Oil: 10 qts.

• Sugar or Honey: 60 lbs.

• Salt: 8 lbs.

• Water: 14 gallons (two-week emergency reserve)

It doesn’t take much thought to recognize that if we couldn’t get to a store or couldn’t get anything from a store (for instance, in the case of a pandemic) we would want to have many more things on hand. Here are a few suggestions: 

Essential medicines

Yeast, baking powder

Warm and cold weather clothing, such as boots, gloves, and hats

Filter or iodine tablets for Water purification (filter, iodine tablets)

Sleeping bags (good for 0 degree weather, if possible)

Basic First Aid kit

Camping and cooking equipment: knives, hatchet, cooking pot, can opener, etc. 

Matches/lighters, candles

Books, games, scriptures

Sanitary supplies

Flashlights & batteries

For those who wish to carry their preparedness a step farther, consider:

Camp stove, wood burning stove, kerosene cooker and appropriate fuel—or solar oven

Porta-potty

Heavy duty plastic garbage bags

Hand tools, axes, shovels, pickax, saws

Rolls of plastic (clear & black) mil 6, duct tape

Good quality tent

Cash reserve (including small bills and coins)

To work toward having a more complete emergency preparedness, you may want to add at least one item weekly to your supply—more if you can. Start with whatever you’d be most grateful to have in an emergency situation. 

Create an emergency evacuation plan for your home and family.

In an emergency situation, every second counts. Here’s a good way to prepare:

• Make a map of your home and label every exit, including doors, windows, and hallways, which may become a potential fire escape.

• Label the primary exit for each room (usually a door or hallway) and a secondary exit (usually a window) in case the primary exit is blocked by smoke or flames.

• Label the main shutoff valves of the gas, electricity, and water lines.

•   Establish a safe meeting place outside the home so everyone can be accounted for. Include the place on the emergency phone numbers list that you have by your phone. Also list phone numbers of relatives you would want to contact in a disaster situation. If possible, arrange for one out-of-state relative to be your contact person since local lines are often unusable in emergency situations. Your out-of-state contact can let other worried loved ones know you are all right.

• For extra caution, leave a pair of shoes, gloves, and a flashlight or lightstick at each person's bedside.

Practice your emergency evacuation plan. 

Place your emergency kits strategically near an exit so they are easy to grab in a hurry. When you practice decide exactly what each person is to be responsible for. Practice turning off utilities (gas valves, etc.) A gas wrench is a useful tool for this.

One family who experienced mandatory evacuation just a few years ago, decided they wanted to be better prepared in case such a thing happened again. Each family member wrote down what they would need to gather. First came photo albums and movies, important files, and 72 hour kits. Then each person listed 3-4 more things that were important to them. The mother made a master list and put it in a kitchen drawer they labeled the “safe drawer” where they also put important financial and medical records and prescriptions. (No one knows when they might have to gather such information quickly for an emergency.) A new evacuation order did come, but this time the family went directly to the safe drawer and felt really calm. Within minutes all of important papers were organized in a binder and placed with their 72-hour kits, the other items were gathered, and they were prepared to leave.

Conclusion

All of this might seem overwhelming, but not if you take one step at a time. You never know what is going to happen or what kinds of preparedness will be most important to your family, but you will sleep better at night if you are moving in the right direction and making solid preparedness your reality.