Jennerosity

Emergency fire equipment at a temple in Kyoto, Japan

One of the things that comes up for me every winter is the topic of emergency preparedness.  Usually it pops into my head at about the time that I’ve stubbed my toe on a cabinet and am hopping around in the dark, in the middle of the night, during a power outage.  Over the last couple of years I’ve tried to be a bit more pro-active about things and have been assembling an emergency kit.  It isn’t exciting or fun, but it give me some peace of mind.¹  I also feel a strange sense of professional responsibility whenever I work on it, since I do work in the insurance industry.

I find it fitting to turn to this project once again today, the day we received our first ‘major’ snowfall of winter.  I reviewed my 300+ blog articles in my google reader this morning and noticed that quite a few were also on emergency preparedness.  Since I didn’t want to brave doing anything outdoors, I decided I would once again review my meager emergency supplies.

I put together a big list of all the things that the emergency lists say you should have.  I used several sources and put together all the ideas and then went down to the garage where we keep most of our emergency supplies and checked off everything that we already have put together.  I tossed out the emergency food supplies that had expired, reorganized, and added a few things to the box.  I still have a long way to go to be as ready as they say you should be.  I’m especially in a quandry over how to store the 24 Litres of water recommended, in a manner that’s accessible and portable, in case we had to get it out of the house.  So, it’s very much a work in progress still, but hopefully by the end of winter it’ll be a little more complete.

How about you?  How ready are you in case of an emergency?  Got any tips, pointers, stories to share?

1. Though re-framing it to be a zombie emergency kit helps to make it a little more fun [↩]

No related posts.