Operation "Prepared for anything" - Part 1

The first project of the year, Operation "Drafty" is complete.  Time to move onto the next major project - Operation "Prepared for anything".  I find now that I have a home and a family, I have that much more reason to be prepared for anything that may happen.  My wife and I are both adults, so it's easier for us to be a little less prepared because we are able to be more flexible and agile to handle emergency situations and can more easily adapt.  But my 2 year old?  Bean is too young to understand a disaster.  He is too young to know what to do.  He's too young to understand food rationing.  He's too young to know to stay away from a window during a bad storm. 

There have been some pretty nasty natural disasters in the past decade including snow storms, ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods tsunamis and earthquakes.  I started asking myself questions like:

If power is out and no stores can accept credit cards and ATMs aren't working, do we have cash to purchase food from the store?

If the water was shut off, would we have drinking water for at least 3 days?

If we had to vacate our home, do we have necessity emergency bags packed?

If the banking systems crashed, do we have records of all our financials and assets to recover our assets?


I started doing some research on the FEMA website  (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to get a sense of how ill prepared my family was in the event of an emergency.  Long story short - very ill prepared. 

There are steps.  I will provide the highlights and then dig into the details. 

1) Be informed
2) Make a plan
3) Build a kit
4) Maintain readiness


So let's start at the beginning - Be Informed.  This breaks down to knowing and understanding the types of disasters that could occur and identifying which ones could impact you and your family base don where you reside.  Obviously if you live in South Dakota, the need to be prepared for a Tsunami is slim to none.  The FEMA website walks through several major types of disasters including:

 - Natural Disasters (droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc)
 - Pandemics
 - Home Fires
 - Technological & Accidental hazards  (blackouts, Hazardous Materials incidents, etc.)
 - Terrorist Hazards (Biological, chemical, cyber, etc)

And they also cover Options for Protection and awareness of Recovery from a Disaster.  A lot of scary stuff can happen - it's a bit frightening reading through the disasters that can occur; especially once you start thinking about how it could impact your family's livelihood.

The best thing to do here is to read through the different types of disasters and really consider what could happen in your area.  Some natural disasters are very unlikely to occur based on location as previously mentioned.


The second step is Make a Plan.  This gets a bit crazy, but here is the simple breakdown of the planning.  First, think about the locations you are most likely to encounter an emergency situation:

1) The home
2) The car
3) The office (at your work)

(A fourth item to consider is the school/day care emergency plan for your kids - you should be aware of what it is and ensure you've accounted for it in your planning)
 
Now let's dig a little deeper:

1) The home should have:
          a) Reaction plans for various disasters
          b) Disaster kit (prep for a minimum of 72 hours)
          c) First Aid kit (check out the Red Cross for recommended contents of the home kit)
          d) A "Go bag" for each family member in the event of evacuation (prep for a min of 72 hours)

2) The car should have:
         a) a disaster kit (prep for 24-48 hours)

3) The office should have:
        a) a "Go Bag" disaster kit



Basically being prepared is going to take a lot of leg work.  The first thing I am going to tackle is the First Aid kit for the home.  (Baby steps, right?)  Currently all our medicine and first aid related stuff is in a drawer in our bathroom.  To make matters worse, it is within accessibility range of Bean...and he gets into everything.  So I talked to the wife and we purchased two plastic bins.  One is smaller with little compartments and the other is much larger. 

The plan is to make the smaller bin a tote with more emergency related items - band aids, antiseptic wipes, aspirin, tylenol, etc.  As bean gets older, I am sure we will have our fair share of skinned knees, splinters and bruises and bumps.  The First Aid Kit will be easily accessible and organized to accommodate all the little stuff we may need for a quick response to an incident.

Bean with "Boo Boo Bunny" after a fall

The rest of the medicine we only need seasonally or rarely (cold medicine, allergy medicine, etc.) will all go in the big tote and will be packed away on one of the higher shelves in our closet.  We can pull it out when needed, but it would only be on those rare occasions we get sick.

This is the plan:
 1)  Take inventory of all the medication / First Aid stuff we have
 2)  Begin constructing the First Aid tote.  Here are the recommended items from the Red Cross:

• 2 absorbent compress dressings (5 x 9 inches)
• 25 adhesive bandages (assorted sizes)
• 1 adhesive cloth tape (10 yards x 1 inch)
• 5 antibiotic ointment packets (approximately 1 gram)
• 5 antiseptic wipe packets
• 2 packets of aspirin (81 mg each)
• 1 blanket (space blanket)
• 1 breathing barrier (with one-way valve)
• 1 instant cold compress
• 2 pair of nonlatex gloves (size: large)
• 2 hydrocortisone ointment packets (approximately 1 gram each)
• Scissors
• 1 roller bandage (3 inches wide)
• 1 roller bandage (4 inches wide)
• 5 sterile gauze pads (3 x 3 inches)
• 5 sterile gauze pads (4 x 4 inches)
• Oral thermometer (non-mercury/nonglass)
• 2 triangular bandages
• Tweezers
• First aid instruction booklet

  Additionally, we will need to consider any prescription medication, emergency phone numbers and medical insurance details.  Also, I want to think of an efficiency standpoint - what are some of the items that we may need from time to time?  Here are some of the items that initially came to mind:

• Children's Tylenol for Bean
• Adult Tylenol/Ibuprofen/Advil
• Antacids (Tums, Rolaids, Pepto Bismal, etc.)
• Eye dropper
• Index cards with family member's medical info (allergies, dosing instructions, etc.)

     
 The goal for the next few days is to sort out the medication into one of the two bins.  Hopefully I'll be checking back in by next week with some good progress.