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10/26/07 Are you Equiped?


Minis On The Edge

  

27 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you Equiped to Flee in case of a disaster?

    • Yes
      4
    • No
      23


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If there were a "Natural" or "Man made" disaster in your area, are you equiped to flee?

This was a question that was posed to us last night and it has me running around to buy things as we only have water and a first aide kit. We were told we should have a "Go Bag" equiped with the following:

  1. Copies of importat documents in a water proof container (Birth certificates, SSN cards, Health cards list of perscriptions)
  2. Extra set of car keys & house keys
  3. Extra, Credit (debit too) cards & Cash
  4. Bottled water ( 1 gallon for each member of the household)
  5. Flashlights, Am/FM radio extra batteries, cell phone
  6. Medication (Up to date) and enough for at least one week, list of dosages, doctor names & phone numbers
  7. First Aide kit
  8. Non perishable food, Sturdy comfortable shoes & rainwear
  9. Child care supplies
  10. Map and a contact meeting place for all family members in your household

This "Go bag" should be near an exit so that you can grab it at a moments notice. They said you should even have family pictures in it. Hubby and I were trying to decide how BIG of a "Go Bag" we need :clap: It's four of us in this house now.

Are you prepared? I know I am not ;) This would be great to have in the event of a fire (like the ones in California now), tornado, hurracain or manmade disaster such as what occured on 9/11 .

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Since we were evacuated with only an hour's time we learned our lesson. We are ready! All of our evacuation things are in the front hall including cat and dog carriers, extra food and medications for them, and especially since we had to sleep on very hard cots without mattresses, we now have lovely 4" thick foam pads and sleeping bags because even though it was August the air conditioner was so cold we about froze. Be prepared is our new motto!

Wolfie

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I'm soooo not prepared!!!! It would be mayhem if we had to evacuate. In fact any natural disaster (they've been saying for years and years and years that the Wasatch Front is due for a major earthquake)...in which case i'd have to stick around for work anyway...health care worker

it is an excellant idea to get prepared tho!

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We all have emergency kits in the trunks of our cars - not totally complete - no imp. papers, etc. But we have the basics to get through a small crisis if needed - blankets, walking shoes, food, water, first aid kit, etc. - packaged up in backpacks stored in our trunks. Dh is very insistent on this. They're updated once a year - old food taken out, new stuff put in. I work 10 hour days two towns over and have to travel over a bridge & overpasses to get home - so it is a comfort knowing I have emergency stuff in the car in case a disaster happens away from home. Walking shoes are a must in my kit - because if we had a big earthquake while I was at work, chances are I'd be walking rather than driving my car.

At home we have an emergency kit, again with just the basics - in case something happens & we're at home. I do need to make copies of important papers to put in there - that's about the only thing we're lacking.

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This "Go bag" should be near an exit so that you can grab it at a moments notice. They said you should even have family pictures in it. Hubby and I were trying to decide how BIG of a "Go Bag" we need :) It's four of us in this house now.

Tracy, if room permits, maybe have more than one "go bag" - divide up the emergency items between four backpacks so no one person has to carry it all if you have to leave home.

To save money, we got our emergency backpacks at a second hand store - they aint pretty ;) but they do the job they are intended for, and I doubt I'd be worried about fashion or style if I actually had the need to use them!

edited to add: per my husband, emergency kits should also contain a big , thick tip, permanent marker. If a big disaster occurs & you have a meeting place for family/friends to gather in an emergency - there's a very real possibility that the meeting place could be unsafe - and if you don't have a designated meeting place - no one that you care about may know where to find you. If your house collapses due to an earthquake, etc. a handwritten note could be difficult to find - but you can write on just about anything with a permanent marker to let your loved ones know where to go and how to find you :)

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Oh don't forget those iodine pills. I live within the 5mile radius of a nueclar power plant, and we have them in every car, kitchen and travel bag. We stock our cottage in VT for emergency, as well as home and cars. Papers are the only thing we have only one set of. You never know.

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Firstly let me say that when you have an hour to leave and it's 1:00 in the morning and you've been waken up from a sound sleep - the first thing you do is PANIC! Doug was in a daze. He doesn't function well now. So I felt pressured to get us out of the house and follow the directions we were given. We had ONE HOUR. Now that it's over and we've had a chance to regroup our thoughts, we sat down and have worked out plans on paper! And in reality. We have a long front hall. There is an area there with our evacuation materials in it. We feel confident that if we had to evacuate today that it would be much less stressful on both of us, and a lot more efficient.

We also learned that we could not communicate very well. So we bought a laptop with an antella, and went totally wireless both for the laptop, the home computer, and our phones. We also packed our CD's with all of our software programs that we use, and two packup portable hard drives that are both loaded with everything we need for the laptop to stay in touch with lists and people. And to keep us from drying up from boredom of sitting around the centers.

We packed a large briefcase with all of our important papers from birth certificates to VA papers and all in between. It's bulging, but it was worth getting everything in a bag with handles so we can just throw it into the Thule.

We changed out Doug's breathing machine for his sleep apnea so that now we have a battery pack for him if there is no electricity (like at the center we were at), packed extra medications for him. Packed a bunch of extra medical supplies as he is still having his problems that he had in August.

We bought a Thule car top carrier for the Subbie that goes the entire length and width of the car top that is especially made for the Suburu. It holds 100 pounds and it is stuffed with all of the sleeping bags, foam pads, extra clothing, overnight bags, etc., and is ready to hoist on top of the car. It is soft sided, but totally waterproof. I love it!

When not used for evacuation it's a great shopping carrier as well! When we go to Costco we fill it with all the soft items we buy - i.e., tissues, toilet tissue, paper towels, etc., anything that is fairly soft and fairly light. this leaves room in the car for all the really heavy things like big bottles of laundry detergent, 40 pound containers of cat litter, 50 pound bags of dog foot, cat food, bird seed, etc.

Our trailor is back ordered now and won't be available to us for pickup until March of 2008! Which is fine!

We also have some books stashed away in the area - the ones you want to save from a fire. And it's great for reading as our center had no magazines or reading materials of any kind. Family photographs that are truly irreplaceable like the old tin types of my parents, and Doug's day in Japan. Also soap, shampoo and rinse and TOWELS! The church next to the center provided us with showers, but nothing was available like soap or the above! Extra nightwear too! Flashlights. Emergency food that requires no cooking if we get to a shelter where there are no necessities. Extra clothing. Water bottles for us and for the dog and cats.

It's amazing how your mind refuses to function in an emergency. You sort of stand there dazed and you just throw the live things in the car and leave totally forgetting the other things. If we had been prepared like we are today, we would have just went to the area inside the front door and just calmly put everything in the car. We would have put the lap top in it's case, along with the cables, the speakers, the mouse, the docking station, the laptop separate monitor, the antella and wireless gizmo. We would have unplugged the remote backup system from the main computer and put that in the car, and all of the camera hookup's to use with the program on the computer for re-doing the pictures from the camera. We would have put the two big CD holders in the car. The photos and books. Medications and all listed above plus the dog and cat food, carriers, animals And would just drive away. And it would have all been achieved in less than an hour. No panic. Just a lot of trips from house to car which is now parked about 5 feet from the porch all the time now.

When we do get our trailor, much of what is in the front hall will be put into the trailer PLUS several pieces of Doug's most precious things, and my molds and kiln, etc. We will be ready to just hook the trailor and go. In fact come next July 1st. We start preparing for the 2008 fire season. Hopefully if the gods prevail, we will have this house in the forest sold and will be moving to a new home over in Helena, but we will still prepare ourselves for the inevitable!

Wolfie

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Thanks for sharing that list Tracy.

Over the summer I did start getting some things. I don't have much but I do have a battery operated radio, little lantern, some ice paks, and some other stuff - I can't remember what else. I am going to make it a priority to start building up my stash for emergencies and/or evacuations.

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  • 4 years later...

Personally right now, I'd be sunk. I have nothing and can't afford to buy anything.

But I used to have a day pack that I had for SAR. I always carried the day pack in my car as a just in case. It contained firestarter, water proof matches and a lighter, a compass and whistle to go around my neck, a small stove with some extra propane cans, a first aid kit, some large plastic garbage bags, several space blankets, some parachute cord, a jacknife, a first aid kit, a water filter (if I still lived near the coast, I'd also try to get a desalinator - they're expensive though!), a foldable 5 gallon plastic bag for carrying water, flashlight, some hard camping silverware, a metal cup, and some other assorted things like bug spray, markers, surveyor's tape, and paper, stuff like that. The whole thing weighed less than 10 pounds. You may be able to leave in your car but after some disasters, you may not get very far because of impassable roads. So you may either have to hike or camp out for several weeks.

And for those who plan to stay put during an emergency (which is what I'd do if I didn't have to evacuate), don't forget to learn how to turn your gas off!

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This is a good subject, thanks Tracy for the list. And thanks Gina for the insight and ideas of things to think about and have ready.

I am sad to say that we would not be prepared. I barely know where flashlights are when the power goes out. I used to do a lot of couponing and shopping, so I had huge stockpiles of stuff in the garage. It was the family joke that everybody would meet here because I would have enough stuff for a long time. I have been lazy lately and my stockpile is pitiful now.

My sister on the other hand, has really been concentrating on this a lot lately. We had a conversation over dinner a few weeks ago. We made our meeting plans. And she told us where the kids would be if something happened while they were at school and the aliens got her. She has also been talking to her kids about different scenarios, which I thought was a good idea. And right now they are looking to buy their"go car". So at least someone in my family will be prepared!

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I am very fortunate to live in an area which is not particularly prone to natural disasters - we have no record of flood, earthquakes etc but it is definitely a food for thought question and I'm impressed by how organised many of you are.

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I live in NYC and I am not prepared. I don't even know how one would prepare here. There would be mass panic. It's hard enough to get around here on an average day.

I remember 9/11, though, vividly. I assume another disaster, natural or otherwise, would just flatten NYC, or parts of it.

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