As I view the images following Japan's 9.0 earthquake, each more heartbreaking than the last, the sober realization that many folks are cut off from food, water, medicine and adequate shelter is becoming greater by the hour. As someone who lives in California, I've grown up with the reality of earthquakes and the fear of "the big one." But, the simple fact is, many of us aren't prepared properly, if at all.
Sitting half a world away, all many of us can do is donate money towards the relief efforts in Japan. But we can all do something to prepare ourselves and our families for possible disaster. Be it earthquake, hurricane, fire, tornado or flood, there are simple steps each of us can take to ensure a basic level of preparedness.
I gathered much of the following information from Ready.gov, which is a campaign from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (better known as FEMA). It is a good idea to have a kit not only at home, but in your car and at your office or school. As we can see from other recent disasters, food and water become scarce very quickly.
Items to Include in a Basic Emergency Supply Kit:
• Water, one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days, for drinking and sanitation. Water purification tablets or The Lifesaver Bottle.
• Food, at least a three-day supply of non-perishable food. Canned foods, dry goods which are properly stored. Believe it or not, Costco even offers a Vegetarian Emergency Food Supply Kit.
• Battery-powered or hand crank radio and a NOAA Weather Radio.
• Battery-powered or hand crank flashlight. I would also include an LED headlamp because you may have to use your hands for other things during an emergency.
• Extra batteries, or better yet, a solar charger.
• First aid kit. Don't forget prescriptions that you can't do without.
• Heat reflective "Emergency" blanket. Made of mylar, they reflect your body heat back to you.
• A whistle. This will help you signal for help if you're trapped.
• Dust mask, to help filter contaminated air and plastic sheeting and duct tape to shore up existing shelter or create a makeshift shelter.
• Moist towelettes, garbage bags, feminine items and plastic ties for personal sanitation.
• Basic tool kit, including a wrench or pliers to turn off utilities.
• Can opener for food (if kit contains canned food).
• Local maps, in case you have to take unfamiliar roads to evacuate.
• Cell phone with chargers, inverter or solar charger.
Other items to consider packing:
• At least one change of clothes. Think layers so you'll be prepared for any type of weather.
• A solid pair of shoes or boots to protect your feet in dangerous conditions.
• Copies of important family documents. I generally save copies of my passport, insurance documents and contact lists in google docs. There is another service called Evernote that would certainly be helpful if your computer or hard drive were damaged.
• Camping items such as a sleeping bag, tent, waterproof matches, candles, mess kit.
• A supply of food and water for your pet(s).
• A fire extinguisher.
• Emergency flares (especially if you are keeping this kit in your vehicle).
For any of you who are like me and can't get your mind off what's happening in Japan, here are three of the many worthy organizations you can donate to:
The Japan Society, Doctors Without Borders and The Red Cross.
(Image: The Examiner / Robert Thomson)
Apartment Therapy's Sofa Shopping Guide
Nikki’s Sweet and Cheery Print Studio
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Sprout Side Table
5 Things Paris Taught Me About Travel
Recipe: Ham, Cheddar & Chive Egg Bakes
These also go by the name of a "Bug-Out" or "Bug-In" bag. "Bug-Out" would be a situation where you'd be forced to leave your home; "Bug-In" is just the opposite.
If you want to get really, really into this concept, this website gives disaster survival from the perspective of someone who dealt with Katrina. He brought up a lot of things most folks won't think about (like keeping hard copy of every important paper as well as a digital copy on an encrypted hard drive or thumb drive).
Forgot to mention - the Katrina website is LONG, and good to read in chunks, but the worksheets are invaluable.
I really wonder how all this is supposed to fit in a "kit." This is likely to take up an entire closet in my house and probably not be all that useful once said disaster strikes because it would probably be buried. I'm not saying they aren't good ideas, I just can't see how the execution works.
Lovie - the site I listed goes into further detail about these things. The key thing to remember, though, is that you should apply the execution to your specific situation. If you live on or near a fault line, you might have a harder time with this than others. In my case, a disaster would be someone nuking DC (we're in Baltimore, and would be right in a fallout zone), a major flood (unlikely for my area, but still a remote possibility), or a power loss in the winter after a huge snow dump (not unlikely, based on the blizzards of 2010). In each case, we'd "bug-in" for the duration, and everything would be easily accessible.
Yea, I have the same question as Lovie. Also, do you put all this stuff on the top floor or in the basement? Upstairs if it collapses, even just a little, everything could be broken and strewn everywhere, if in the basement, it could all be crushed and inaccessible, again, even if there's just minor destruction.
Faln: Where is your kit? Upstairs for flooding, basement for nuke? Middle level for ease of reach, then move it to the right place? If you have a closet full of stuff that could take a lot of time to move.
Great ideas
At my former company, they required each of us to have a kit ready with supplies that would help with our comfort if we were displaced for a short period of time. Most of us kept non-perishable foods, a multi-tool, a couple bottles of water, a sweater or blanket and hygiene items. They supplied the duffle bag, we filled it with what made sense to each of us.
I keep a small kit in my car with emergency mylar blankets, some food, water, a flashlight and tool kit.
At home, I live on a single floor and everything I need is within ample reach (helps to not have a big house, in this case). Though I've been considering investing in a generator to supply power if we end up without it for any length of time.
It's probably best to just keep it somewhere accessible, and then when you hear reports about a potential disaster, pull it out and keep in a main room with you.
Tinka - we have our bags separated out:
the oh crap, the house is burning down bag is in the car - my SO keeps his in the truck. this is also the bag one should carry in case one gets stranded somewhere. tools, tarps, water, crank radio, MREs, and other basic survival equipment GENERALLY can withstand extremes in temp. i'd say the only things affected by car storage are water and MREs, and those can be changed out. since we're not in a tornado-prone area and we're not over a fault line, the car's the best place to store these things. i don't have the fear of a garage roof falling on the car, either. the only things that don't stay in the car is my thumb drive with everything important on it and my purse(with wallet, keys, various ID cards, etc). the purse follows me around the house. call me paranoid, but this has proven to be the best way to locate everything since i'm prone to putting things down and forgetting where i left them.
if the house isn't burning down, we have the remainder of the emergency stuff in the basement, right by the basement door (and next to the long-term food storage, which we cycle out every month). this includes stuff like water, a week's worth of clothes (which is usually super old stuff that either looks a little ratty or wouldn't normally get worn, but covers my body enough to get me through the crisis), etc. anything not inherently waterproof is in a waterproof bag for each of us. i also keep extra cat litter in a bucket in this location as well as cat food and the carriers for the little monsters. these can be used for staying in the house as well as planning to leave, like if there were a major breakdown in local infrastructure that might cause us to head for the hills. i wish i could say this were an unlikely scenario.
keep in mind, as i said, this is what works for us. examine your specific situation, go over all possible scenarios, and choose storage locations appropriately. there's a risk no matter where you put stuff, and there's no perfect situation. do your best, make sure you've planned how you'd handle each scenario, and practice. either practice grabbing stuff and hitting the basement, or packing the car, or whatever depending on the situation. if you can practice it enough, it'll be much easier to do in the event of something happening.
i do also want to stress something: if the networks go out and if infrastructure breaks down and you have to leave your area, either plan ahead and have money stashed somewhere in a fire-safe box you can access quickly or plan to go to a bank on your way out of town...OR get an account at a national bank. if your bank isn't a national bank and they cannot regain access to the internet, you won't have access to your money.
I live in quake country and here's what we do:
Kit 1: in the cars, enough food & water and emergency information, if we can't drive all the way home we have enough that we can walk (and in the '89 quake the overpasses were closed for hours and I did have to walk the rest of the way home).
Kit 2: two brand new rolling garbage cans, filled with duplicate supplies for humans & pets including a tent and two collapsed pet carriers, one is stored at the corner of the garage and one is stored in the garden shed. In either case, should there be a collapse or fire, I could get to one of those kits. We have enough food & water to make it for 2-3 weeks and, because I only shop for pet food 3x a year, I just rotate out the food from the kit to the kitchen for use (ensuring there's always fresh food). For the human items I update them 2x a year during the daylight time changes. If you're in an apartment, puts yours in rolling (food) coolers, store them in the furthest corner of your house and your car trunk. Keep several pairs of heavy duty gloves in various locations so you have something to dig with if needed.
Ultimately, we figure even if the house collapsed we can live in tents or the shed (which is quick to rebuild) while managing during an emergency, and having prepared as best we can the news reports about xx% chance of a massive quake don't even catch our notice... we're ready... so the concept of 'prepare and forget about it' really does work (for us!). Just prepare, really, it'll help put your mind at ease.
I have a kit that I purchased from Amazon, and it all fits in a backpack.
another important thing to note: utilize safe deposit boxes. keep originals and digital copy there, keep copies in both digital and hardcopy with you. thumb drives are getting big nowadays, and at least one company makes a water-resistant, heavy duty thumb drive. solid state memory (SSD and thumb drives) is the most stable storage option out there right now, and it's worth using for this purpose.
Rucy - sounds like you and yours are about as prepared as you could be. i like the idea of using the rolling trash cans...might reconsider our container options should we decide to change things in the future. nobody steals garbage cans, so we could conceivably keep them in the shed without concern.
The car is a good idea, too. Maybe I'll make three kits, car, upstairs, basement. Boyfriend will love that. Thanks for the ideas, faln!
tinka - sure! glad to be of help. :)
I live in West L.A. and also have my kits ready to rock if the earth does.
I've stocked two big Rubbermaid storage bins, packed to the gills Tetris-style, with a week's worth for two people of water, food, crank flashlight/radio combo, deluxe medical kit, clothes, boots, work gloves, camp cooking kit, TP, feminine products, multi-use tools, rope, duct tape, tarps, weapons, waterproof document file, booze, cash, and a deck of cards. One lives under the bench at the foot of my bed, the other lives out in the garden shed in the yard.
I have another one, just smaller and lighter, in another Rubbermaid bin in my truck.
Don't forget weapons, booze, cash, and playing cards, folks. YOU JUST NEVER KNOW.
I'm shopping on Amazon as we speak. The Art of Manliness also recently did a Bug Out Bag article (before the quake hit) that is about the most comprehensive I've seen.
Another thing I've done is written a Doomsday Document that I'm printing out, sealing in an envelope, and mailing to my mom in NJ. It is basically the keys to my life: all my personal information, my email sign-ons, access to my online accounts, local contacts, etc. That way if I'm dead or incapacitated, my mom will be able to check my email, log into my bank and facebook, etc. Granted she could probably be able to get all that kind of info legally, but it would take time, and I trust her enough to not open the envelope unless it was absolutely necessary. (My dad on the other hand? Hell no!)
Down here in Florida the big major disaster I'm worried about is of course hurricanes. (There's a Cat 5 out there with Tampa's name on it!) I *should* be safe in my apartment, but having a duplicate of all my important stuff (plus my account information) 1000 miles away works for me as a backup plan.
I'm sorry, but I think most of this is absurd. I've been through a 6.9 earthquake, and the worst of it was going without electricity for a night and having to throw out some food once the lights turned back on. I'll stick to my small food/water/blanket/medical kit for my car and my stock of food and water at home. Any disaster that requires more than that will likely kill me anyway.
1. Laundering before hurricanes to prepare for power outages afterward has no down side. 2. Go to bed fully dressed, including sneakers, when sheltering in place through a hurricane. During Andrew, my coworker and her little daughters, wearing just nighties, had to run through dark, soaked, wrecked rooms, the floors of which were littered with shattered glass.
@hethyr - I had friends who had to deal with Hurricane Andrew and they had to endure nearly two weeks without power, so the fact that the mom always had a fully stocked pantry, they used bottled water normally and had a good supply in the garage and had pre-purchased lots of plywood to patch up broken windows, helped their 5 person family immensely.
@Erika2500 I had friends who were trapped in their home after the Northridge earthquake for 3 days and, thankfully, survived. I think if you had endured that, you'd feel differently about preparedness.
Erika - is it safe to say you don't have car insurance or homeowner's/renter's insurance? how about health insurance?
consider this one other type of insurance. that's all we're doing.
@Erika2500
Well, aren't you privileged to not have had your house demolished or power knocked out long-term or been displaced because of evacuations. Just because you've been lucky doesn't mean that others have, or that you will continue to be so. And then telling others that their preparations are absurd is foolhardy and arrogant in the extreme.
It's always better to be OVER-prepared than under-prepared.
Why don't you go take a look at the photos coming out of Japan right now and tell us more about "the worst of it was going without electricity for a night and having to throw out some food once the lights turned back on" ?
I second the notion that your cars should have a kit as well. I have heard it is best to place it somewhere within reaching distance, in the event that you are trapped and unable to move far.
I somewhat agree with Erika on this front; the entire reason that these events are classified as disasters is that nobody was prepared for them. Japan is accustomed to both earthquakes and tsunamis [the word itself is Japanese], and no matter of planning could have prepared them for this.
These are all great suggestions on what to have on-hand should [when] the need arise, but that doesn't change the fact that when a "disaster" strikes, you won't be prepared; that's (semantics...I know...) what makes it a disaster.
Because I'm so wonderfully pessimistic myself, I willingly choose not to prepare for any event...because that's the risk taker I am. Luckily though, I don't have to gamble with any life than my own. If I had children, or pets, I may feel differently.
I live in LA, and have a fully equipped survival kit, but nobody has yet mentioned a crucial ingredient: cigarettes! Though I haven't smoked in many years, you can be darn sure I'll be hankering for a smoke, if I survive the big one!
@Erika2500: the only thing absurd is that you'd shake off a 9.0 'Great' quake (on the earthquake magnitudes scale) because you happened to be in a '6.9' Strong quake. The shaking difference is something like 1,000 times greater and my friends, in Tokyo, who survived it admit to feeling traumatized by the experience. Prepare, don't prepare, to each her own but please do put the absurdity into perspective here.
@falnfenix, thanks, the garbage cans work well because they're both portable AND noone ever seems to think anything valuable will be stored inside!
Maybe this is a little too tinfoil-hattish, but does anyone keep iodine tablets to protect against thyroid damage from radiation poisoning? Are they even available OTC (or to civilians)?
i grew up in CA and was used to bringing an emergency supply kit of food to school every year. Now I live in HI, and during the tsunami watch, my husband and I realized how unprepared we were as we stood in a long line at the grocery store purchasing necessities. Needless to say, we are prepared now. I'm keeping everything in a bin outside on our apartment porch within easy reach. Thanks for everyone's suggestions - now I have a few more things I need to add to our emergency kit!
smuckleness - check amazon. i'm sure you'll find something there.
Thanks everyone, these are all great ideas, will have to prepare. I have a husband and 2 babies, and after seeing what just happened to Japan, I realized we don't nearly have enough prepared. We have go bags with power bars and change of clothes for each adult, but nothing for the babies. Will need to update the contents, and keep stuff in the car as well. I also like the idea of a Doomsday documents probably sent to both sets of parents just in case.....Does anyone know where I can get helmets for babies?
@Karyl, I don't have kids, but am guessing bicycle shops may sell helmets for babies.
@ashasekh - no cigarettes, but i'll "out" my former coworkers and say MANY of them had a bottle of whiskey in their kits ;-)
I swore I was going to get something together after 9/11 & didn't. I'd rather at least try to do something & be prepared than do nothing. I pray I'll never have to use it.
Good tips everyone! I'd like to add one. Get a good survival book to add to your kit. Never know when you'll really be roughing it. Besides they are kinda fun to read. Here's a link to the US Military Survival Guide online: http://www.equipped.com/fm3-0570.htm. Remember the saying, "Preparation + Luck = Opportunity."
Everyone should do something like putting everything on google docs in case of a fire in your home and for travelling.
I live in Los Angeles and in a small apt so putting it all in one area seems a bit daft but I have put at least basics together and printed off pictures of each person / cat in my family which are in a waterproof envelope.
I never thought about a kit for the car - that's a good idea.
Glow sticks are another thing I would add. You can pick them up cheap at Lowes or HD.
Also everyone with pets should have one of those stickers saying pet inside in their window.
http://www.aspca.org/about-us/free-aspca-stuff/free-pet-safety-pack.aspx
Also put a copy of that near your electric circuit board as this is where the fire dept will go to first if they enter your house in a disaster. Remember to write EVACUATED over the stickers if you take your pets with you in a disaster if you can.
I have a little stuff like clothes, some food, glow sticks, flashlights, etc. stored in the trunk of my car, but I learned during the San Francisco quake of '89 the most important things to have is cash. One VP took a cab from SF through Marin, across the San Rafael bridge and all the way home to Walnut Creek and needed a lot of cash to pay for it.
Remember ATMs, credit card readers, cash registers, won't work without power - so if you're out of cash you're out of luck.
@smuckleness:
Yes, the pills are available to civilians but they're also kept by the government for immediate distribution (in the event of an emergency) for the areas surrounding an active or decom'd nuclear power plant. If you have questions you should contact one of the hotline numbers below - but - if you're not within 25 miles of a plant it's really not something you need to have on hand. If you're within reasonable distance and it puts your mind at ease, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have them in your kit, but you should never take them unsupervised because they do have side effects. I'm over 100 air miles away from a decommissioned plant that still holds spent fuel rods and the tablets aren't something I feel necessary to have in my kit).
Copied from a news article:
"Anyone with concerns may contact the department's hotline in English and Spanish at (916) 341-3947. The Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention in Atlanta also has made a line available to anyone with questions at (800) CDC-INFO."
@Erika2500: I would highly encourage everyone to always be prepared (for yourself or your family) It is simply prudent and responsible. Having some basics on hand GREATLY reduces panic and stress in the event of a minor or major incident as well as the demand for aid during crucial hours. Importantly, the prepared will have more ability to help those around them (relief, etc) since they don't the worry or burden of scavenging for temporary provisions.
You never know what situation you'll find yourself in... we had some devastating wildfires here about 10 years ago, and people's experiences varied greatly. We were well prepared, and were able to provide for ourselves and several families despite being evacuated and returning home to no electricity for one full week. The kids (very young at the time) all thought we were on a camping trip! This also allowed us to provide assistance in evacuating others (and their horses and livestock) - I feel fortunate to have had the ability to share the burden when we were needed.
hi. i live in chch, new zealand. we've just experienced two pretty big earthquakes in a 6 month period; previously, we didn't live over a fault line...
the first earthquake we all felt quite pleased with ourselves- our house was ok & while we didn't have water for 6 days or electricity for 2, we managed. you can carry water, right? and we had bottled water anyway, cos we were prepared.
problem was, we thought that was it. our 'big one'. 6 months later another one happened, and although lower in magnitude on the richter scale, more intense ground shaking was measured in this earthquake than any other in the world.
but we'd had our 'big one', hadn't we? - we'd used, and not replaced, our bottled water. we hadn't allowed for flooding, liquifaction... the road rose up outside our home and exploded, a volcano of filthy water flowed towards my house.
we didn't have electricity for 2 weeks. while we have water on at the tap, it needs boiling (1 month later) and our sewerage is still broken. my family, 2 kids under 3, and i have all had vomiting and diarrhoea.
the least you can do for yourself, for your family, for your neighbour, for your friend, for the guy in the street you don't even know: is be prepared. get prepared twice. keep back-up stuff stashed in your car, shed, garage, next-door, online. memorise 2 phone numbers. learn to light a fire.
pack spare chocolate.