Prepare for an Emergency (Zone Defense)

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While we can’t be fully prepared for everything that could happen, there are plenty of things that we can do to make life a little more comfortable in the case of an emergency.

Prepare for an Emergency | Life as MOM

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Over the weekend, our power went out in the middle of the night. It was a beastly hot night, and since we don’t have AC, I wasn’t sleeping all that well. Then the devices that were charging in our room (telephone and iPad) flashed with a power surge and lit up the room.

Alrighty then, I’m awake. I got up, looked out the window, and confirmed that yes, the power was out everywhere I could see. We live in a heavy military area, so the child-of-the-80s-who-watched-War-Games-and-Red-Dawn-in-me got up to make sure it really was just a brown out.

Normally, my phone charges in my room each night. But, since it was a weekend and I wasn’t planning on getting up too early, I had shrugged that off. Instead I had left my phone in my purse. Normally, my purse sits on a dresser in the foyer, but no, I had left it in the kitchen after unloading groceries.

And yes, I remembered all of this at 2 am. I felt my way down stairs to check twitter and the electric company’s website. No need to worry, but it did get me thinking.

If this were a real emergency, it would be good to

  • have all the phones charging
  • had a corded phone plugged in so that we could use our house phone working
  • have my purse more readily accessible
  • have flashlights by the beds, in the hallway, and en route to the outdoors

A power outage is not typically an emergency, but it could be depending on its duration and the time of year. If my freezer was packed to the gills, it would most certainly be a bona fide emergency. Sort of.

My point is that even though I packed Go Bags for the kids and a 3-day emergency supply for our family, there are still things that I could do to make sure that if a true emergency occurred, I’d be better prepared.

(For the record, I did have a flashlight in my purse, so it’s now next to my bed.)

Be prepared for an emergency.

zone-defense

This month on Zone Defense, we’re tackling Emergency Preparedness. Let’s get a little better prepared for emergencies.

Here are some past posts to help you think through how to prepare:

Over here, I’ve got a few goals for the month:

  • scan our important documents and update our household inventory and store them securely
  • update all the bags with fresh food and clothing
  • rotate out food close to expiring in the emergency cupboard
  • purchase emergency candles and more flashlights as well as a no-electricity phone charger
  • get an emergency water filter

What are YOUR goals for getting better prepared for an emergency situation?

Zone Defense

Zone Defense is a month-by-month plan to clean and organize the home. This is my second year following the plan. And while it doesn’t ensure that my house is immaculate 24/7, it does help us stay a little more picked up.

Each month we visit a different zone of the house and set it to rights. Or do some project. Or somehow leave it better than it was when the month started.

You can check out the Zone Defense archives here.

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4 Comments

  1. We live in an area that is thankfully not often threatened by any sort of natural disaster other than perhaps a tornado but we have lost power twice for a week each time. It was not pretty after a few days. Let’s just say I have no desire to be Amish! LOL I was so thankful that we don’t use a well and that we have a gas water heater so that we could at least flush our toilets and have hot showers.

    We learned that it is always good to have gas for the grill so you can continue to cook and that having a grill with a burner on the side for pots or pans is a life saver. We also make sure we are stocked with batteries for the flashlights as they were impossible to come by in the stores after day 1 and to have cash for those stores that will still sell things like ice but are cash only as they cannot run their registers. Battery powered lanterns are great as it is a pain to walk around with flashlights for a week. During the second outage we gave up and bought a generator that is just big enough to power the fridge and small freezer so that we didn’t have to lose all that food again.

  2. We bought some more dehydrated meals this weekend because they were on sale. A few months ago when we had a tsunami warning, I put together a 5 minute evacuation list and a 30 minute evacuation list.

    Happy emergency preparedness month.

  3. thank you for this information in your mom-friendly way of explaining things.

    last month i sent off-campus, college bound daughter with her own emergency backpack. she gave me the rolled eyes, but i sure do feel better knowing that her campus area is notorious for tornadoes. i assembled her pack using a list of items i took from an amazon.com link. using her old pack from high school, i tossed in almost everything that source suggested. i left out water purification pills, face masks, and one or two other spendy items.

    it never occured to me to stash a few dollars in there. i also need to follow up on my original thought of having each of her roomates complete their family contact list to share with each of us sets of parents.

    oye, always something. thanks for the simple set up. makes it less daunting.