Stocking Up the Cupboard

Beginning a new category – Stocking Up the Cupboard, Freezer, and Under the Couch. Why? Because stuff happens.

I was posting with another friendly blogger and we got to commenting on good times to stock up, i.e., March is freezer month.  I have been in emergency management (EM) in one capacity or another for over ten years now.  I’ve taught classes in Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT); I have acted as an Emergency Operations Officer and I live in a dangerous, gorgeous state replete with volcanoes, 2nd to California in earthquakes, we lose hikers and find ’em again (if all of us are very lucky and the neighbors turn out for us, as well as the professionals), and a variety of everyday hazards.  Whoever said Living is hazardous to your health was an understated genius.

Just because we know something ourselves, doesn’t mean everybody else does.  Or that they will think it important.  By now, if you do not understand the importance of having water on hand and a bare minimum of three days (yes, that’s that famous 72 hour kit thing) on hand, you have been buried in sand and the local dodo bird club wants you.  In God’s honest truth, you should be prepared for at least two weeks for every person in your household.  Otherwise, there will come a day when “babies look up and say why me?”  (Bill Cosby and go carts).

See, you can have fun and be responsible!  So, as my Sunday good deed thing, I’m going to start posting on this subject, both from the EM perspective and an economic one – there are great deals out there and these are tough times, let’s share the wisdom.

When I started teaching the CERT course on preparedness – along with the best team of people in the world! ~ I would ask how many people had water for three days.  Hands would go up.  I’m relieved to say, as time and crises went on, each new class had more hands up than the one before.  You can live a long time without food.  You can’t without water.  I’ll say that again.  You can live a long time without food.  You can’t without water.

Here are the Four Phases of Denial:

• 1.         It won’t happen here.
• 2.         If it happens here, it won’t be that bad.
• 3.         It won’t happen to me; and,

My personal favorite….

• 4.         It will be so bad it won’t matter.

That said, you need at least one gallon per day per person.  More if you’re over 50, pregnant, sick or…. name it.

Think about what you are going to do with it.  People get great big containers of water – splendid.  Now, what if you have to evacuate?  Is it all in one place – what if that just happens to be the place that gets crushed in an earthquake?  So, have different sized containers; store them in different places.  Water is cheap, folks.  But, without it, you cease to exist.

 

And, don’t forget these guys: