Be prepared to save your own ass

I am currently digging out from under eight inches of snow that fell on top of an inch of ice. Because I am prepared, I was much more comfortable than my neighbors. And I went to visit Andrew at 618 Rants and Raves, and he used to b e a cop, and he has two excellent posts up about public safety and emergency preparedness. The first one is a review of the current literature, and the second one is a survey of other safety professionals and their take on our state of preparedness. Both are good reads and I recommend them highly.

I am leaving the technical stuff that they crammed into my head at bioterrorism response training to him. I am going to give you a shopping list and some practical advice.

First of all, I fully realize that most of you do not live with an electrical engineer who has hooked up an alternator to a recombinant bicycle that will charge 12-volt car batteries, but you can do that very easily. Other (normal) people might want to buy a battery charger and a couple of extra car batteries and power inverters. You can charge your cell phone, use your cordless, charge your laptop and operate lamps, even the microwave. We spent the money for marine inverters, but you can get perfectly operational ones at Costco for less than a hundred bucks. In fact, for well under a hundred bucks you can get a basic inverter and the bottom of the line car battery.

Katrina showed us all that we are one instance of nature’s fury away from total social meltdown. First responders are affected by natural disasters too. They serve their own communities, remember. They have families in the path of the beast, too. I have been in that position, and not known the status of my families safety for a while. It sucks. Big time. The patients don’t stop coming and there is no good news coming in. You just fall back on your training and deal. It’s all you can do.

But let’s get to the nuts and bolts of personal preparedness. First of all, everyone needs to have an emergency kit with working flashlights and batteries, a crank or battery-operated radio, bottled water and canned and shelf-stable food, like granola bars and tuna fish. If you get into the emergency batteries for any reason, for God’s sake, replace them next trip to the store! Check your emergency preparedness kit every time you change your clocks and make sure your batteries aren’t expired, etc.

At minimum, be prepared to stay in your house for three days without any outside assistance. In addition to the basics, there are a few other things you might want to consider purchasing, over time and as extra cash-flow allows. First off, a camp stove is a good investment. (Make sure if you use one of these, you use it in a well-ventilated area like a garage with the door open, or outside.) Tuna fish and soda crackers and granola bars can get really old really fast.

If you live where you risk losing your heat source to power outages in the winter, go to Home Depot today and purchase a propane space heater that is safe to use inside. These operate on bottled propane, just like a propane grill. Buy a heater that heats a ceramic core that radiates heat throughout a room. How long the bottle of propane will burn depends on the size of the bottle that connects to your particular stove. Do the math and have enough propane canisters on hand to stay warm in a single room for three days.

So let’s recap:

You need to have three days of food and bottled water for everyone in your household.

You need batteries, flashlights and candles; as well as a radio that can operate without electricity.

If you live in a winter-storm prone area, you need an independent heat source.

You should consider purchasing a camp stove.

You should consider purchasing inverters and DC power sources for your home, and perhaps even a generator (fuel is often a hindrance with generators. For the same amount of money that one would spend on a generator worth having, you can buy a recombinant bike and an alternator and a handful of good marine batteries and inverters, and run your house without diesel or gasoline, and get in shape in the process.)

In short: Be prepared to save your own ass, because there is no guarantee anyone else will be able to help you if the shit hits the fan.