In previous letters we have discussed how the Church has simplified their approach to emergency preparedness, focusing on food storage and financial security, and emphasizing a three-month food supply instead of a one-year supply (while still acknowledging that more is better).
Despite this, we tend to still have the old information etched into our minds, and that is fine. Having a one-year supply of food is great, and there is nothing wrong with having 72 hour kits or camping equipment on hand. However, we often keep the old ways of thinking in mind as well, and that can be limiting.
See if this list sounds familiar:
• 72 hour kit (because it takes 72 hours for disaster response teams to arrive)
• 2-week supply of water (because it can take two weeks to restore a water system)
• 1 year supply of food (because if a disaster strikes right before harvest, it will take a year for the replanted crops to grow)
These are all good supplies to have, and decent reasons for having them, but there are a few problems with this focus. One is that for the last two items, it is a lot of work—so much so that it becomes intimidating. With lists like this the recommendation for water storage is usually one gallon per person per day, so my household of four would require fifty-six gallons of water and that doesn’t even account for the pets. Trying to imagine accumulating and storing groceries for a year feels impossible as well.
(On the other hand, coming up with a 72 hour kit is relatively easy, but we can see that with a bad enough disaster, or perhaps multiple disasters occurring in different places in the same time period, it may take much longer for relief agencies to arrive.)
So because this level of preparation seems like so much work, it becomes easy for people to put off thinking about it, and never get around to it. It becomes even easier because in a disaster scenario where you are imagining water services disrupted, all of the local agriculture being destroyed, and FEMA and the Red Cross coming in, that is so far from our normal experience that it doesn’t feel real. Procrastinating preparedness steps becomes almost logical with this limited mindset.
Let’s look at it in a different way:
• Supplies in the car in case inclement weather arises and it is more logical to either spend a few hours or the entire night downtown, rather than spending three hours to go twelve miles on the clogged highways.
• Some stored water so that when possible water contamination is announced, you do not need to boil water, or run to the store and try and stock up on bottled water, while you are waiting for the investigation to be completed.
• Food storage so that when money is tight, you can skip a week of shopping, and you can stretch your budget by waiting for items to come on sale.
I had already planned this topic, but there was an op-ed piece in the January 20th Oregonian that went along well. The emergency manager for Clackamas County, Jay Wilson, was writing about how the snowfall could be a dress rehearsal in some ways for a major earthquake. There would not be the same structural damage, but which roads get clogged, with those resulting transportation issues, would be similar, as well as whether people had necessary supplies at home or not, and whether they had contingency plans for disrupted travel and getting everyone safely back home.
What I found most interesting was that he said that he used to try and get people to prepare for the worst-case scenario of a 9.0 earthquake, but people would find that overwhelming, and harder to act on. Now he just tries to get people to prepare for our annual winter storms, and that will still give them a leg up for when the earthquake does happen.
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2010/01/from_snowfall_to_earthquake_ar.html
Preparing for the little things can go a long way towards preparing for the big things. Think about the most basic needs: food, water, warmth, light, and the ability to connect with family and household members.
Think about having some food and water, and maybe a change of clothes, in your car, or at your desk or locker where you work. You can probably put it together without any new purchases, simply using items you already own.
The next time you finish a 2 liter bottle of pop, think about rinsing it and filling it with water to add to your water storage.
Think about purchasing two extra non-perishable grocery items next week and building up food storage.
It’s not that doing more might not be better, or that there might not be other things to do. You may find yourself getting thoughts about flashlights or boots or gardening, and if you are getting promptings you definitely should follow them. Moving in the right direction increases your odds of getting promptings.
It is true that the Northwest is due for a major earthquake in the next fifty years, and we should think about that. It just may be more helpful to remember that winter storms can happen in February, or that the Florida freeze may affect citrus prices and that they have recently announced Eggo and pumpkin shortages, and that the water reservoir on Mount Tabor is still uncovered.
It may also be helpful to remember that in the event of a big disaster, the point of food storage might not be to live on your storage for a year, but to be able to share with others for a few weeks.
The beauty of preparedness is that you don’t need to know what is coming up to be ready for it. Since you usually can’t know, that is really convenient.
