What to put in my disaster preparation kit

[Garmann]

My friend is part of this group that stresses disaster preparedness. After he talked to me about it, I realized I’m really not prepared at all.

I’ve decided to get supplies that would be helpful in the case of a natural disaster, or in the event of a terrorist attack or something similar. I know I should purchase canned food, bottled water, blankets, flashlights, first aid kit, etc. What are some other things I should include that I might be missing?

\"The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.\" Kevin Kelly

[Guest missingsomething]

There are great publications on this and you can find a lot of the things on the church by either googling lds 72 hr kit, or LDS emergency preparedness. Also The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has some great things.

Here's some things I have in mine in addition to what you have listed here: toiletries, medication, waterproof matches, bleach, extra clothes, diapers if you have kids, compact blankets, a radio, extra batteries, toys for kids (color book crayons), set of scriptures, and extra glasses. I keep mine in large tupperware tubs and then I have mini version (car 72 hr kit) in my car and small 72 hr kit in backpacks

[Misshalfway]

Toilet paper and a portable toilet seat! Don't wanna get stuck with out a way to take care of business.

[NeuroTypical]

Step 1 - figure out exactly what you are preparing for.

Natural disasters and terrorist attacks are not similar at all. Are you preparing to survive in your home for a period of time, or are you preparing to be able to grab things and leave? How long do you anticipate the disaster to last?

When I sat down and looked at things, I discovered that the most-likely disasters we needed to prepare for, were weather related things like a winter blizzard, tornado, or other massive storm. It immediately dawned on me that both I and my family spend a heck of a lot of time 25-35 miles away from our house. So not only did we prepare to have supplies to see us through at home, we also created packs for our cars. My pack is a 'get home bag', and includes stuff like hiking boots, ponchos, food & water. My family's pack is more of a 'stay put and weather the storm' bag, and includes plenty of cash to buy things like hotel rooms.

The task might seem a bit daunting, but things get a little more clear when you have a good grasp of, say, the five most-likely events you think might happen.

LM

[pam]

I totally agree with having an emergency pack in your car as well. If you are away at work and let's face it..many of us work many miles from where we live, you will need to have things to get you by. Especially appropriate shoes. I certainly wouldn't want to have to hike 20 miles to get to home in a pair of high heels. Not that I ever wear them but you get my point.

[the Ogre]

In my stake, when we were doing our block preparation and inventorying what everyone had, the following were in too short a supply: chainsaws, heavy link-chain, axes, pry-bars, and gasoline.

I think we often forget when putting together our emergency kits, we forget that it might involve heavy tools. In places where earthquakes and hurricanes have struck all of the gear above was needed. Our hard work as Latter-day Saints will be called for.

In my kit I also include: a machete, a hand ax, a crowbar, a chef's knife, a 22oz hammer, heavy gloves, a small tool kit, 50' of rope, and a small dolly.

[MissKitty]

I like to keep £100 to one side. This is my emergency money. What if there was a mass evacuation of people and I had no cash at all?? I'd be a little stuck then. So some money you can grab quick if you have to leave I think can be a good idea.

[NeuroTypical]

chainsaws, heavy link-chain, axes, pry-bars, and gasoline.

Yeah, if some tornado or severe storm hits here, there'll probably be a million trees across my road home. I hadn't thought of my draft horse as part of my preparadness efforts, until I envisioned her hooked up and pulling trees out of the road.

[pam]

It's kind of like my daughter not wearing a coat during the winter. Her thinking is..I'm going from the car into a building. I keep trying to explain to her..what if your car breaks down (which it could it's 17 years old). What if this was in the dead of winter? You'd be out there freezing before any help could get to you.

[hankpac]

After years of discussing and doing various preps, a friend of mine, was asked to do the FHE at our "empty nest " Monday night session (several older couples with no kids).

She walked in with a day bag. She sat it down and proceeded to empty it talking about the reasons for each item, and how long it took to find it, and put it in the sack. She said at the beginning of her talk, that she waited until 15 minutes before the session to start, and with no preparation, began hurrying through the house to see if she could gather a complete 72 hour kit that was full of essentials, without unnecessary items, and without forgetting anything.

My wife and I consider ourselves pretty prepared for most probable instances in our region, as are a couple of others in our group.

We were impressed with several things:

Her bag was pretty complete: I would have felt comfortable shouldering that bag with no changes, and walking into the wilderness on the spot.

She wasted almost no time dithering: She knew where stuff was in her house, and she knew what she wanted in the bag, and where to get it from storage.

She had food, shelter, clothing, and a stainless steel pistol (minimum maintenance) She had water, a map and compass, a military scripture set, and copies of her legal documents all bundled or laminated, and in a double zip lock bag.

She had two forms of light, and two means of starting a fire. She had a pen, pencil and marker. She had foil, duct tape, and parachute cord. She came in wearing jeans, boots, two pair of socks, gloves, a light jacket, and a heavy jacket/waterproof over her arm.

She had a small baggy of toiletries, and sundry medical stuff like.

As an exercise, packing up under a time constraint is valuable, and educating.

We have done it several times since then in our household.

Another time tested execise that we did more often when the kids were still home, is to take the 72 hour kits, and move into the back yard for one night, at a moment's notice. We did it once a quarter, in each season. the purpose was to skill check, or to test new gear. If someone had earned a merit badge recently (three boys), they were expected to use that new skill. If it got to cold, or stuff just wasn't working, we could easily move into the house, and I would pack up the stuff in the morning. We had some great nights, some chilly nights, but we all learned a lot, and had fun.

My 72 hour kit is still packed.

Good luck.

There are lots of lists on the net, just do a search. print out several, heck print them all out. Then modify them to YOUR needs. Add and subtract as you find less or more need for this or that. Modify again, as you try to learn new skills such as fire starting without a match. (all three boys could do this one by age 10). Check the pack frequently, and carry it everywhere for a week or two so you get used to the weight, and decide if there is something you need to ditch. You will be surprised just how MUCh a liter of water weighs.

(8 lbs to the gallon).

[EandLDOW]

Think of what disasters are most likely to happen, then plan what your response will be, stay or evacuate, stay at work/school or go home, etc. Then plan what you will need to keep you comfortable and nourished during that planned activity for about 1 week.

I disagree with the "72 hour kit" philosophy, and it's notable that the official Church policy doesn't mention it. If you look at recent disasters, either natural or man-made, 72 hours does not get you either out of the area nor through the disaster nor carry you until help comes. 72 hours gets you pretty much into the middle of the problem, then what? You need at least one week, and a month is much better. The Church recommends a ninety day supply of supermarket type stuff, then build up a full years supply of basics after that.

Hope that helps.

[mtsteffen]

There is a book out called "Its A Disaster!"by Bill & Janet Liebsch. Website is IT'S A DISASTER!.... It is a well put together book for disaster preparedness in all types of situations. It can be useful for the beginner or someone who wants more ideas.

It has a section for family information, planning, sheltering, creating kits; preparedness & prevention; more than basic first aid and more.

It might be used as ward fundraiser as they do discounts for non profit groups.

Edited August 22, 2009 by mtsteffen

[Generally_Me]

We took ours camping once. It resulted in several changes (I extremely dislike the compact blankets; do you know how hard it is to have the baby FINALLY go to sleep, only to roll over and wake up because of the loud crackling those metallic things make??). Also, what was the point in bringing extra contacts and no mirror? Got some spare glasses instead. Whether I like them or not, the point is to be able to see.

I suggest you take a day or two and practice what you would do if (in our case) a wildfire came through and you had to evacuate quickly.

[WyomingEMT]

We start throwing everything we can find into a big sack and pretty soon you need a Hum-V to carry it. I put a 72 hour kit together 18 years ago, I just updated it and these are somethings that I found. The mylar water containers work very well, we tasted the 18 year old water in the mylar bags and it still tasted good. You can get water in individual 4 oz mylar bags, it also comes in 1 gallon and 5 gallon bags. Any food that had milk in it had turned ransid, including the chocolete bars. We opened old MRE's and found them to still be good. We updated every food item, and increased the size of our cooking pans and went to a propane portable stove. We have a pretty good 72 hour kit in too back packs. You really don't need the kitchen sink in a bug out bag. Edited November 16, 2009 by WyomingEMT

[Hemidakota]

Step 1 - figure out exactly what you are preparing for.

Natural disasters and terrorist attacks are not similar at all. Are you preparing to survive in your home for a period of time, or are you preparing to be able to grab things and leave? How long do you anticipate the disaster to last?

When I sat down and looked at things, I discovered that the most-likely disasters we needed to prepare for, were weather related things like a winter blizzard, tornado, or other massive storm. It immediately dawned on me that both I and my family spend a heck of a lot of time 25-35 miles away from our house. So not only did we prepare to have supplies to see us through at home, we also created packs for our cars. My pack is a 'get home bag', and includes stuff like hiking boots, ponchos, food & water. My family's pack is more of a 'stay put and weather the storm' bag, and includes plenty of cash to buy things like hotel rooms.

The task might seem a bit daunting, but things get a little more clear when you have a good grasp of, say, the five most-likely events you think might happen.

LM

We prepare for those areas of interest.

[LDSVALLEY]

We have several levels of Emergency readiness. We have 72 hour kits with basics we can be out of the house with in under 5 minutes. There are some items like prescriptions (non life threatening) more photo's etc that would take is 15 minutes to get out with. If we have 20-30 minutes we have 4 totes of camping gear we use each year prepacked which includes not only a huge tent but a 30*40 tarp that can cover an entire camp site (that is what my pic shows) and two coolers stored by the food storage that can be packed. Everything can be quickly loaded into our van. With 1 hour of notice we can have a utility trailer attached with enough supports loaded to support our camping area with a free standing tarped structure that has withstood strong winds. (2*4, 2*2 and 1*3's)

Now having proven how organized we are a couple of big oops that I have to fix is

1 we never included a waste disposal system for bodily needs, I assumed digging a hole or trench but we might be in an evacuation area that we can't do that so we need a more flexible way. 5 gallon bucket, bags and odor suppressor.

2 we have not updated our 72 hour kits in two years, while the cloths were bought extra large for everyone and in bright colors to be noticeable at a second hand store we need to check if they still fit and rotate the food items. Batteries replacement is also a must.

3 I used to keep enough gas in cans for one refill of our van and two propane tanks so I knew one was full. One propane tank is out of date and with the price of fuel and our finance. I have less then 1/4 a tank of gas in store and have to rely on our one propane tank left.

4 It is easy once you get a good level reached to coast and think your where you need to be. I have to find time very soon to get it in gear yet again.

My advice

You will drive yourself crazy if you try to do everything at once, or put yourself in the poor house. All the other advice given is excellent. Start food storage slowly ( it can be done for free or almost free and once you reach critical mass it actually can save you money.) , begun a 72 hour kit, work do pay down your debts, put a few cents away each week in bin etc, keep a small reserve of cash in the house.

One of the easiest, inexpensive and important areas that should be done immediately is communications. As a Father who lost touch with his family for 24 hours told me once, the most horrifying part of his experience, fire evacuation, is it happened when the family was apart and they had no plans on how to get in touch. He didn't know what happened to them for 24 hours. You can't rely on cell phones, land lines, or internet. Have three meeting points, one close by, one about an hours walk away and one several miles away. Have a place people can leave messages outside of the house on your property for each other, especially if the house is unsafe to enter.

I helped out a few years ago with preparedness in the Ward and quickly realized at least in our area good intentions aside we are on our own up here. The nearest Bishop storehouse is 1500km away, we have 1 highway into the valley and one rail line from the storehouse to a point 200km from our Ward.

Our Ward has no generator, no communication other then telephone and no emergency shelter, the chapel needs electricity for everything inc water. Our boundry is about 60 by 60 miles.

Good luck, go slow and steady and alter for your local conditions.

[pitcher]

I would recommend that you get a copy of the book "Emergency Preparedness The Right Way" by Howard Godfrey. I t will provided you with the information you need to build a 72 hour kit, ayears supply of food, water purification and lots more. You can get it on Amazon at the following link.

Amazon.com: Emergency Preparedness The Right Way (9781439244784): Howard Godfrey: Books

[pam]

keep a small reserve of cash in the house.

Extremely important to keep some cash in the house. In the case of an emergency, no power, computers etc..you can bet there won't be access to any money from a bank or an ATM machine.

[pam]

I seriously am thinking about getting one of the kids sturdy wagons. If I had to get out and walk anywhere..it might be easier to take things with a wagon then to carry it. Just a thought I had.

[Hemidakota]

Can you eat cash or can you eat food? What would people do in after a week in a natural disaster? Could a slice of bread equal a dollar during calamites or failure of the national monetary system? Again, what is worth more to store during these events?

[pam]

I don't think anyone said that storing food etc is not of the upmost importance. But personally, having been through a hurricane that knocked out power for almost a week..I see the value in having some cash on hand.

[LDSVALLEY]

Can you eat cash or can you eat food? What would people do in after a week in a natural disaster? Could a slice of bread equal a dollar during calamites or failure of the national monetary system? Again, what is worth more to store during these events?

Actually you can eat money if it's bills but would not be filling or healthy. As with all things we require balance, expecting to rely on money or credit is the way the world prepares for things. We are taught to provide for food, drink, supplies, etc. A small cash reserve is simply a component of our storage.

A week after a disaster your bread is moldy, if you are transported out of the disaster area and used your 72 hour kit, you will have to rely either on the government to sustain you or whatever funds you can access.