Note: This is day 18 of National Preparedness Month . Follow this year’s campaign on Twitter by searching for the #NatlPrep hash tag.
This month, as part of NPM17, I’ll be rerunning some edited and updated older preparedness essays, along with some new ones.
#12,760
Although I've had a couple of close calls over the years, last week's brush with Hurricane Irma was the first time I've actually been forced to leave my home in the face of a natural disaster. I wrote about my decision 10 days ago in #NatlPrep: Disaster Buddies - The Most Important Prep Of All.
It is not a pleasant thought, but sometimes circumstances and common sense dictate that you must leave your home - and the bulk of your belongings - behind.Luckily, I had several prearranged places I can go. Friends, who are also disaster buddies (see In An Emergency, Who Has Your Back?), who know my couch is always available to them should they need it.
Being able to leave in a hurry when an evacuation has been ordered means having a plan, a destination, and an emergency `to go’ kit or `BOB’ already equipped, and standing by.
In the vernacular, a `bug-out bag' or `BOB’ (or sometimes GOOD bag for `Get Out Of Dodge’) a bag of emergency supplies, ideally kept at the ready, that one can grab on the way out the door during an emergency.Every hurricane season I go through my personal bug out bag, and replace flashlight and radio batteries from last year, and swap out older emergency rations for newer ones.
A BOB isn't supposed to be a survival kit, but rather, is supposed to provide the essentials one might need during the first 72 hours of a forced, and sometimes unexpected, evacuation.
It should contain food, water, any essential prescription medicines, copies of important papers (ID's, insurance, important Phone #s), a first aid kit, portable radio, flashlight, extra batteries, and ideally blankets and extra clothes.While having to evacuate your home may seem like an unlikely event, every years hundreds of thousands of Americans are forced to do so. Rivers spill their banks, dams break, brush fires rage out of control, even sudden industrial accidents can force evacuations.
And unlike with a hurricane, you won’t always have advance warning.Ready.gov has the following advice on how to prepare for an evacuation, after which I'll have some notes on what I would do differently next time.
Evacuating Yourself and Your Family
There may be conditions under which you will decide to get away or there may be situations when you are ordered to leave. Follow these guidelines for evacuation:
- Plan places where your family will meet, both within and outside of your immediate neighborhood. Use the Family Emergency Plan to decide these locations before a disaster.
- If you have a car, keep a full tank of gas in it if an evacuation seems likely. Keep a half tank of gas in it at all times in case of an unexpected need to evacuate. Gas stations may be closed during emergencies and unable to pump gas during power outages. Plan to take one car per family to reduce congestion and delay.
- Become familiar with alternate routes and other means of transportation out of your area. Choose several destinations in different directions so you have options in an emergency.
- Leave early enough to avoid being trapped by severe weather.
- Follow recommended evacuation routes. Do not take shortcuts; they may be blocked.
- Be alert for road hazards such as washed-out roads or bridges and downed power lines. Do not drive into flooded areas.
- If you do not have a car, plan how you will leave if you have to. Make arrangements with family, friends or your local government.
- Take your emergency supply kit unless you have reason to believe it has been contaminated.
- Listen to a battery-powered radio and follow local evacuation instructions.
- Take your pets with you, but understand that only service animals may be permitted in public shelters. Plan how you will care for your pets in an emergency.
While I keep the requisite `bug out bag' (several duffels, in fact), something I hadn't given enough thought to is what would I take if I had 24 hours warning. It's one thing to flee a burning house with your BOB and your life, it's another thing to have a full day to triage your preps and your life's belongings.
Ninety-five percent of what I took were emergency supplies, since even where I was going was forecast to be hard hit. But I had to leave a lot behind, partially because I had no good way to pack and tote the stuff.High on my list of things to get before the `next time' are more duffel bags. In fact, I'm headed out this morning to hit the thrift stores to buy up what I can find. And most of my emergency supplies are going to be kept pre-packed, and stored in these bags.
I'll tag (or color code) these bags as `Essential', `Nice to Have', or `Optional'. And load my car accordingly.I managed to pack one of my 40 watt solar panels, a spare 12 volt (tractor) battery, and my homebrew USB charging station, but it was bulky, heavy, and a bit overkill. Instead, I'm going order a folding solar panel with a USB battery bank for bug-out purposes.
Despite being well prepared to shelter in place, I found I was less organized than I needed to be to evacuate the bulk of my preps. And that added both work and stress my evacuation.Luckily, I now have a second chance to remedy that.
