Emergency Preparedness 1.

By TLS

Last week we talked about Go Bags. These are essentially an emergency kit filled with useful supplies that should be easily accessible in the event you need to leave your home immediately and unexpectedly.

This week we’ll discuss additional levels of emergency preparedness with a little more in-depth consideration. One way to categorize types of emergencies is by how much time is available to respond to an evacuation order. We may save the sheltering in place discussion for another time. This week we’ll focus primarily on the need to leave and a few different categories of how much time we have to pack for our given disaster.

As mentioned earlier Go Bags are for when you need to leave this instant, grab the bag, jump in the vehicle, or hit the trail, whichever the case may be, and go! No time to plan, no time to prepare, just grab and go.

Most local or regional emergencies tend to allow a little more time and can be broken down into categories such as 15-30 minutes notice, one to two hours, 6 to 12 hours, or anything up to a day. Aside from perhaps the 15-30 minute category, the rest of these are a significantly different situation than when a Go Bag is needed. What’s needed in each of these categories will be highly individualized to the person, location, and situation.

Since packing for every eventuality is impractical, a better plan is checklists. Premade laminated checklists with a Sharpie or grease pencil attached are an excellent organizational tool in time sensitive situations. The main point here is to do the work ahead of time.

In an emergency a lot of our calm rational logical thought goes out the window, therefore preplanning what's needed in each one of those situations could literally be the difference between life and death. Checklists are also a lot easier, and cheaper, to create than prepacking supplies for every situation. Again, the benefit here comes from making these before they are needed.

There are plenty of sources online that provide pre-made time sensitive checklists. Start with these and tailor them to individual needs. During an emergency the last thing you want is to forget your insulin and syringes or the last remaining family photos of long lost loved ones. So do the work now so you hopefully don’t have the regret later.

Don’t wait for the sirens, start your emergency checklists today. A little planning now could be the reason your family makes it through tomorrow.