Emergency Preparedness

We're still eating our Y2K supply of rice. Don't laugh. :-) We were ready. We're still ready. Preparedness is really a way of life. Even the Red Cross recommends that everyone maintain an emergency 3-day (72-hour) supply of food/water and emergency supplies. And the LDS church recommends that their members keep a one-year supply on hand.

If you get your water from a municipal source, it may become contaminated during a disaster like a flood. A portable water filter like those found in camping and outdoors shops is probably a good addition to any emergency supply cache. If you have a well, it's probably a good idea to have a gas or diesel powered electrical generator to operate the pump in a pinch. Water is the most important substance to our physical existence. Be sure that you aren't stuck without an adequate supply if disaster strikes.

There is lots of food out there that stores well for long periods of time. Anything canned will basically last forever. As you cannot count on having electricity or gas in a disaster scenario, you probably will want a way to heat food or store up food that doesn't need heating. Camping stoves that run on white gas or propane are reliable and aren't that expensive. Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) or knockoffs thereof can be found at camping or military surplus stores. They have a long shelf life and either don't require heating or provide chemical heating packs. The downside is that they may not be the tastiest food in the world and can sometimes be quite expensive.

In a disaster situation, you may be cut off from the outside world. One way to keep in touch is Amateur radio. If you are moderately electronically inclined, the license is easy to get and no longer requires that you learn Morse code. General class licenses or higher allow you to operate on radio bands called HF or shortwave. In these bands, your transmissions bounce off the upper atmosphere and can easily travel long distances. The antennas for these bands are huge, so HF is mostly an option for those who live outside cities and have a fair amount of land. With a technician class license, your options are a bit more limited. You can only transmit on VHF, UHF, and other bands which tend to have a shorter range. Most radios for the amateur bands will operate on 12 V DC, which means you can run them off a bank of car batteries if the power goes out.