Disaster preparedness updates in 2019
December 16, 2019
I’m still working at preparing for a disaster and creating coherent and complete kits. We’ve been working at this for years and we’re still not done because it takes time to fit these expenses in the budget. I’m not willing to just buy one of those big kits because I’m looking for long-lasting value which means spending a bit more for quality.
Background
I shared my friend’s expertise on hurricane insurance in 2013. I summarized what we had on hand and what I was thinking for 2017. Things we already have:
Hydration:
- Two water filtration systems purchased almost a decade ago for cooking and drinking if we have no potable water
- 3 days of water packets
- I wonder if a lifestraw would be good to have as well.
Food:
- One bucket of Mountain House emergency food (32 servings)
- Some random canned and packaged foods: Spam, fruit jam, nut bars.
Light:
- One large flashlight that can stand on its end or on its side.
- Scent free tea lights and candles,
- A set of lighters for relighting the candles and stove /furnace pilots.
Energy:
- An outdoor only generator that could keep our refrigerator (and maybe internet assuming those towers are still up) running plus two extension cords to keep it far away from the house. We need some extra gas for the generator and a safe place to store it not in the house.
- I picked up a massive power bank for the household to share and to have a back up to our smaller more portable power bank that I use regularly. This can be used to (very slowly) charge my computer when we just have a power outage, too.
Heat/warmth:
- Sleeping bivvies in case we have to sleep outdoors.
Health:
- A tourniquet for major bleeding,
- Swiss army knife,
- Bandaids,
- Gauze and medical tape.
This list makes me feel like we’ve really dropped the ball, shouldn’t this list be more comprehensive??
We have to update our 5 minute bag/rolling suitcase. Our changes of clothes are fine, but we ditched the diapers for JB. We keep the wipes because they are infinitely useful in a pinch. We have to add another blanket for Sera, food and water for all, a first aid kit, our birth certificates, passports, credit cards, cash, and checkbooks, and the hard drive where I backed up all our photos and documents. I updated our external hard drive last month but I haven’t backed up all our photos yet.
Things we still need
Hydration: We should have at least a 5-gallon jug of water on hand in case we can shelter in place. My problem with that is I’d struggle to use that on a good day.
Food: I did some more in-depth research on my food preparation problem. I’ve been wanting a flameless stove so that in case we are facing a broken gas line situation, or it’s not safe to have open flame for light or heat or food prep, we at least have a safe way to heat our food. I already have the Mountain House freeze dried foods (Essentials bucket, $58 back in 2014) which can just be hydrated and eaten out of the pouch. This was recommended by Stacking Pennies who used it for hiking/camping. Unfortunately the bucket is comprised of carbs plus protein (rice, pasta). With my recently discovered dietary restrictions and our need for a way to heat other foods and water, I no longer consider us prepared on the food front.
I found the Wise Company brand of freeze dried foods which also only require water and waiting. Their meat bucket and gluten free vegetables bucket, assuming they taste ok, would work much better for me than our carb-heavy options though reviews say that each portion of the meat packets is on the small side and isn’t a full meal by itself.
I’ve been pondering on Cindy’s solar cooker but we are fogged in almost 3/4 of the year, so I’m not sure that’s a great option.
This led me to thinking about heating hot water for drinking and possibly bathing. If it’s too cold to be outdoors, we could use the fireplace to heat pots of water but we’d need to fix the chimney first, and have some firewood on hand. This is in the scenario where we have running water, not if we’re down to just drinking water in which case bathing is out of the question.
On a smaller scale, I was looking at the Sterno can method for heating small amounts of liquid or making soups. I haven’t ever used them before though, so I need to do more research on an appropriate set up.
Light: We have recently ordered one more large flashlight, three compact lanterns, and two small handheld flashlights to try out. If they all work, this might be overkill but I’d like to have a little more than we need in this case. We have power outages frequently enough they’ll be useful.
Energy: I’m considering adding a solar charging kit in the rare instances that we have sun, to spare our electricity supply, if we’re looking at more than 3 days without power.
Heat/warmth: We lost power during a cold snap, during the day, and it was c-c-c-old. I’m not sure how we want to fix this. We have a fireplace but, see above, not a great option. I still need good safe ideas for this category.
Health: I normally keep a weeks’ supply of my daily doses on hand, and a week of Seamus’s, but not in our kit. His meds go into pill pockets and they dry out after about ten days even in our awesome pill organizer so I might just need to stay on top of keeping that pill organizer stay filled instead of setting aside a supply of medications. I should add scissors and more sizes of bandaids.
We are way underprepared for an emergency, which is particularly bad here in AZ. Our power went out this past summer for a few hours and we realized we had to leave the house, just due to it getting too hot to stay inside after just 3-4 hours.
We’d like a generator like you describe, but probably need to hire an electrician if we want it to hook up to our main AC. Maybe a wall unit that we place into the sliding glass window in one room is more up our alley though.
Thanks for the reminder!
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Ohhh yeah I feel more able to prepare for an emergency in the cold than the heat. It feels like you’d need to be way more dependent on public infrastructure like cooling stations if you couldn’t leave the area in a hot disaster zone.
A whole house generator sounds like it’d be such great peace of mind but it’s also quite a bit of money.
With regard to solar power: I live in a place where it is overcast/raining about 300 days a year. I had thought that solar wouldn’t be useful either. However, one thing that changed my mind was that we had a solar eclipse on a day when it was heavily overcast, and the eclipse was super noticeable. So, by way of encouragement to re consider those solar lanterns, just because clouds are thick doesn’t mean that the Sun’s energy isn’t makong it through. I’ve since received a gift of a solar lantern that charges just fine – if slowly – on overcast days. Just a morsel of food for thought.
We got a USB solar charger this year for Christmas. The one we got is called Big Blue and was rated highly on wirecutter and amazon.
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Missing from your list is TP, hand sanitizer, and a bucket or two in case your toilets don’t work!
I’ve been working on building our emergency supplies over the last few years. Needing gluten-free food & having a few other allergies has definitely made it more challenging. 🙁 I ended up using dehydrated food from Harmony House Foods because the simple veggies+beans+tvp fit our basic dietary needs, and then it’s easy enough to add rice, broth or bouillion cubes, &/or canned meat to suit our tastes.
I’d recommend also thinking about normal foods that can be rotated once or twice a year from your “emergency bag” into your regular pantry. Nuts, crackers, granola/energy bars, canned tuna, canned fruit, dried fruit like raisins, peanut butter, and jerky/meatsticks are all things that don’t need cooking. Meatsticks are a rare treat for us but most of the rest are cheap. And since they are all familiar to the kids, there’s no worry about them freaking out over “weird” foods.
My task for this winter is to learn how to operate our generator. Our fireplaces are both unusable, so we need to figure out whether our generator can handle the furnace (perhaps taking turns with the fridge?) or whether we’d need to use a space heater to heat just a few rooms.
I just re-upped my food, since my backup MREs expired. We still have the mountain house, it seems to be good forever. My water packets also expired (?), so I refreshed those too. We have a large water container that I refreshed with new water.
We have a backpacking stove to boil water (and the little fuel tanks). Something like this: https://www.rei.com/product/128867/msr-pocketrocket-2-mini-stove-kit
If I were shopping today, I might be tempted by this: https://www.rei.com/product/127968/jetboil-flash-cooking-system
It appears to be easier to use/ignite. There are probably different and perhaps cheaper options if you aren’t concerned about it being light weight, which there is no need to be for home use, but I’m only familiar with backpacking stoves.
We have one of these, which is mostly for fun but we used it during the outages too: https://www.rei.com/product/124865/mpowerd-luci-color-essence-inflatable-solar-lantern
So far, we are opting for no generator and just planning on losing the contents of the freezer/fridge, and using coolers to the extent possible for PG&E outages if they become a regular thing. (Half the town retained power, so some grocery stores were able to keep ice in stock.) We recently got an inverter for the car, which would allow us to recharge electronics (or whatever) in a pinch but not enough to run our fridge. After we do the new roof, we will evaluate solar, but most solar options don’t let you have power directly. I don’t really want a big solar battery (e.g. Tesla Powerwall $$$), but I’d like to have power when the sun is shining. Im waiting for that technology to be worked out, last I heard it was coming but not generally available.
I’m not sure what to do about heat. We have very warm sleeping bags. That + layers + a hot water bottle could keep us warm, but we’d be kinda trapped in a sleeping bag… We don’t have bivvies, but we have a tent.
Based on the recent outages, a good weather radio (with AM/FM) is on my list so we can get info. We had a battery radio, but it is/was very cheap and reception at our house was terrible. Also, walkie talkies, as our neighborhood disaster preparedness group has a protocol for these. We assume our cell phones won’t work.
Our kits are multiple (even at home) and extensive; Mr. Sandwich posted three blog posts about them on my site several years ago. We’ve rotated stock fairly recently, and our needs for Baguette are very specific (SO much macaroni and cheese, which does not keep as long as we’d like). We have, however, just about entirely switched from 5-gallon jugs to the 2.5-gallon rectangular style, with spigot, that are stocked in grocery stores. Kind of like this, although store brand rather than name brand: https://d2lnr5mha7bycj.cloudfront.net/product-image/file/large_231b4187-8bea-43c7-aab6-2dbd02b3c26d.jpeg
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We still have the basics in our emergency kits like batteries, candles, hand-held radio and our first aid kit. With food, we always buy beef jerky and water constantly along with the random canned foods we store at home so I think we’re okay with that although I think we should buy more food to store.
Luckily by joining the emergency response team(NERT) a few years back, I was able to discover the importance of storing emergency kits in our home or else we wouldn’t be that prepared when an emergency occurs. Being in earthquake country along with the emergency shut offs and fires that have been happening, it’s always important to be prepared for a disaster.
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Could your generator be used for some climate control as well as the fridge? or no?
I talked my folks into getting a permanent generator, and it has already kicked in 4x in less than a year! With my dad on O2 24/7 and with very sensitive medical issues, it is a must for them. But even if he weren’t sick, they wish they’d done it sooner. They’ve been very surprised at how much they like it and how much peace of mind they (and I!) get from it.
As for alternate stoves, this is the one I want to get next: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0753NBMJ5
This system doesn’t use traditional fuel, I have it in my emergency kit: https://www.magiccook.net/
a wind up/battery operated radio would be good to add. it’s how most emergency agencies will communicate with the public if the standard communications lifelines (cell/internet/tv/etc) go down.
a small fire extinguisher is nice to have around, even just for kitchen mishaps 🙂
a whistle for signalling. voices get very tired of calling for help very quickly.
smoke/dust mask? I’m thinking of the CA wildfires, and buildings coming down in earthquakes and the like. no one wants to breathe that in.
To keep food stocks fresh, I keep non-perishables like cans of stuff/granola bars/etc for emergencies and donate them to shelters at Christmastime. I stock up on new ones every year. That way they don’t go to waste/expire and I have rotated my food supply.
It is awesome you are thinking of this and are so prepared and serious about getting prepared. You’re gonna be everyone’s destination when shiz goes down!
But also, the stuff is just one leg of the tripod. The others are getting first aid trained/knowing how to use the stuff, and having an emergency plan. E.g. if LB is at school, PiC is at work (or elsewhere), and you are out running errands or out somewhere, and the cell networks are down, what happens?
There are wilderness first aid training courses that are fab and would help you hone in on what items you’d need if you have to sleep rough or get injured and can’t reach a hospital immediately.
With climate change, the hits are going to keep coming fast and hard and more frequently. Most of us are likely going to be left on our own to deal to some degree.
I just now realized that if the power is out we won’t be able to go to the internet for first aid/etc. refreshers (DH and I have both had training and DH’s is current, but it’s nice having reminders). So I got a book and a laminated cpr thingy from amazon.
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