develop a sensible disaster plan and survival kit

This weekend I went through my first aid kits and compared them to the list of contents recommended by the American Red Cross. Basically, I’ve come to realize that most commercially-available first aid kits are nothing more than glorified band-aid boxes, and that in a real emergency I wouldn’t have the equipment I need. So, I just need to order a few first aid kits from the American Red Cross website. The Target/Red Cross Emergency Starter Kits ($30 at Target, and they donate $10 to Red Cross) include a Red Cross first aid kit already, so I wish I’d just bought that to start off, rather than trying to assemble my own from scratch.

And now I’m really done with this goal.

Because I’ve realized that I made a major oversight. I need to make an emergency kit for my cat.

It shouldn’t be hard, but should probably include:

• supply of food
• small bowls for food and water
• small tray/tupperware with litter
• harness & leash (we have these but never use them under normal circumstances)
• bag/backpack to grab quickly

I suppose this should be kept in a separate bag than the human food stuff, in case we need to leave the cat somewhere. I should make some sort of contingency plan in case we have to leave her behind.

But I’ve got the bare-bones of the emergency kits together (ones for the car and for home.) Now I’ll just be adding things as I find them.

I’m almost done with the ones I’m giving for Christmas; I still need to buy small first aid kits for the car kits for DH’s parents. I found some at Target for $5 but they only had two, so I have to go back for more.

While I was at Target I noticed they have a 4-person emergency kit for $30, and $10 of each sale goes to the American Red Cross. That’s definitely cheaper than each of the kits I’m putting together (for one person!) but my kits have some more expensive stuff like hand-crank radios which don’t depend on batteries. Anyway, the point is, if you’re too lazy to go all-out putting your own kit together, go buy one from Target!

I decided to give emergency kits to my family and DH’s family for Hanukkah and Christmas this year. I figured it wouldn’t take too much extra time since I’m already working on assembling one for myself and DH. (It does cost extra money, though!) Since the our parents are already well-established at home, we thought we’d assemble auto emergency kits for them, whereas my brothers and DH’s sister would find a home emergency kit more useful.

My general idea was to look at the contents of a commercially-available kit (for example, here ) and adjust the contents appropriately. I’m not quite finished buying stuff for the kits, but I’m close. I’ll put a list about each of the kits into a comment on this entry.

DH and I went to an army surplus store on Saturday and got some stuff, both for our own kits and for kits which we’re giving our families for Hanukkah/Christmas. For anyone living in the L.A. area, we went to:

M & I Surplus
2090 N Garey Ave
Pomona, CA 91767
(909) 596-1924

They had a decent collection of stuff that was probably cheaper than you’d find at Target, but still not as cheap as I was expecting/hoping. DH and I bought some stuff for camping, too. I didn’t buy everything I wanted for the kits, because I was planning to go to another store on Sunday:

Major Surplus & Survival
435 W Alondra Blvd
Gardena, CA 90248
(310) 324-8855

We never made it there, though, and I sincerely doubt we’ll be able to get there this week, since they close at 6 o’clock on weekdays. I’m expecting to get the rest of the supplies I need at the dollar store, the grocery store, and Target. I want to finish this up during the week since Friday afternoon we begin our great trek up to Seattle for Thanksgiving, and I hope to be able to bring along the kits for my family, already wrapped.

I went to the Red Cross website and got a list of things to put in a disaster kit. I’ll use this as my template as I’m shopping for stuff.

They suggest packing a three-day supply of food that doesn’t require any preparation or heating (e.g. canned food.) Since I’m actually making kits for at least 6 people as Christmas/Hannukah gifts, I think it’s probably worth putting a little thought into developing a somewhat palatable meal plan.

Any ideas?

about what to do in various emergency situations. Mostly it was stuff that was obvious, but had to be said just for the record.

This site has a gi-normous list of things to do in preparing an emergency plan and survival kit. I plan to do three (or more!) bullet points per week until it’s all done. As I develop the plan, I’ll keep the information in my FlyLady control journal. For step 4 (practice and maintain your plan) I’ll incorporate them into my monthly FlyLady routines as appropriate.

If I do three bullet points per week, I’ll be done by about mid-November.