How do you prepare for a disaster?
For a long time, Christy and I have been in the habit of keeping a modest amount of “food storage” in our basement. It’s enough to last us about three months, with supplemental water and some fresh food (eggs, milk, etc.) We have a pair of fifty-gallon water barrels, with fresh water inside (and a once-every-six-months chlorine tablet regimen) in the backyard. We’ve actually lived off our food storage several times when I’ve been unemployed, and it’s been a lifesaver for the budget during those stressful times.
Yet as we’ve watched events in the American South unfold, as Lake New Orleans grows and swallows the city whole, I wonder:
How the heck do you prepare for a disaster like that???
I have no flippin’ idea. Except maybe turn into one of those whack extremists out in the boonies, living off meat you hunt yourself or something. If your food storage is seven feet under a river of sewage, it’s not much use to anybody. If your water barrels blew away in a hurricane, they’re not going to keep you from going thirsty.
For several years after the Northridge Earthquake in 1991, the epicenter of which was a scant two miles from the garage I was living in at the time, I kept a bag packed with my important belongings right next to the front door. Guess that habit has stuck with me; thanks to the efforts of my spouse, we have one last contingency: a briefcase full of important papers, parked in the front closet near the front door. It’s the thing we’ll grab right after grabbing our kids on the way out the door. It contains account numbers, passports, IDs, and other information we’d need to make a new life and settle insurance claims. That’s definitely a last-ditch resort, but (for instance) if our house burned down around us, we’d be able to grab it and get out of the home. With any luck.
What preparations have you made for disaster?
And a last question about Katrina: At what point do you just write off an entire city as a loss, and give to the ocean what she wants to claim? Or do you rebuild and keep your tenuous peace with the ocean through a series of dikes and dunes like one “>famous country?
Food Storage
I’ve decided that keeping all your eggs in one basket is a bad idea. Thus far our food storage has been in the basement storage room. While we’re not likely to flood as deep as New Orleans has, we could get flood waters in the basement.
Besides that, what if you’re stuck in a room for a long period of time? I have always kept a couple bottles of water in each closet, but it’s time for me to keep some food in each room as well. I’ve decided that food storage will go under the bed. Also in each room I’ll have a can opener! —
Christy
We’ll rebuild. It’s human
We’ll rebuild. It’s human nature. For every time that Nature, God bless her, sticks it to us, we simply take what she throws at us and then come back for more.
We’re a surprisingly resilient race, in the end.
—————————– “I can kill you with my brain…” Arthur Rowan