Disaster Preparedness Update

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DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE: I mentioned this earlier, but with hurricane season underway people always start thinking about disaster preparedness again – even when they live out of hurricane zones. Anyway, the Popular Mechanics guide to disaster preparedness is now online for your perusal.

Meanwhile, you can find some previous InstaPundit posts on the topic here, here, here, here, and here. And here’s a column I wrote on the subject last year. And a huge disaster preparedness list. And here’s a guide to emergency preparedness from Consumer Reports.

Also, here’s an item from Wired on the topic. One piece of advice: People tend to focus on buying stuff, stockpiling food, etc. That’s good – you won’t be able to run down to Wal-Mart when you really need emergency supplies – but you should also focus on having a plan, and acquiring some skills, for when things go wrong. A full pantry and some radios and flashlights (and guns, and cash, and bottled water) is very important, but it’s what we lawyers call a necessary but not sufficient element of disaster planning. More on that here.

posted at 02:12 PM by Glenn Reynolds instapundit.com/graphics/permalink.gif
 
I think it might be a good idea to point out that, even if a hurricane isn’t exactly going to be your problem, you still never know what may happen. Even if it might be winter storms, now might not be a bad time to start gathering your stuff together, and starting plans.

A bit off topic, I went to the huge disaster preparedness list, #12 is the “Mainstay Emergency Food Rations. One Pack.” I don’t know if they carry it any longer, but the alternative item is Harry Potter in the Deathly Hallows. Good list, but the computer didn’t exactly picked out relevant alternative.
 
Two years ago, we went through both Katrina and Rita. We lost power for 2 weeks after Katrina. Got it back for a few days and lost it for Rita for 11 days. I bought a generator after Andrew in '92 when we were without power for 14 days.

We have natural gas. I never lost hot water nor my cook top in the kitchen. Didn’t loose cable as well. We all slept on the floor on mattresses in one room. We had an window A./C amplified by a fan and the cable did not go out. We managed. We had hot showers in the house and could cook. We didn’t open the refrigerators/freezer unless absoulute necessary and we ran the power to them during the day when we weren’t home.

Biggest problem was gas. It was a lot cheaper before Katrina. I’d hesitate now to be so profligate with gas use.

Power goes off in the winter? Not a problem. I can keep my house warm with fireplaces. I can’t keep it cool.
 
All who may be victimized by the hurricane, I will keep in my prayers…especially those too poor to ‘prepare’ for such a disaster.:signofcross:
 
When I built my house in the Ozarks, I remembered the ice storms of my boyhood – they knocked out the power over a large area. So I did a couple of things – I ran my power and phone lines underground, and put a woodburning stove in my basement.

I keep a supply of firewood cut to fit the stove, a Coleman dual-fuel stove and lantern, batteries, hand-crank radio, a small generator (to power up the freezer and refrigerator) and canned goods in the “utilities room” in the basement.

Naturally, I have other things – tire chains, battery-powered tire inflator, chain saw and so on.

The last ice storm we were without power for a week – and were perfectly comfortable living in the basement. There were about 16 trees down across our access road, but the chansaw took care of that.
 
vern_humphrey said:
The problem with that is that it assumes people are responsible for themselves, which is Politically Un-correct.
Click to expand...
I disagree, there is a time to be responsible and there is a time when you are truly in need, no matter how much you planned for something.
 
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