If Disaster Strikes!

No one is safe from a natural disaster! In fact most of us live in an area that is prone to one type or another. ARE YOU PREPARED if a disaster were to strike?!?
A few years ago I assembled a basic 72 hour emergency preparedness kit. This kit holds the essentials that my family would need to survive for three days. If we had to evacuate our home quickly we would grab this and go. Inside are things such as a change of clothes, food, water and basic first aid supplies. Ideally you should take out your kit every six months or so and update the food and clothing sizes and anything else that needs to be swapped out.

Well this was the weekend I had set aside for this little project. We pulled out the dusty old duffle bags from the garage and pulled out all the old clothes and things that have been crammed in them for so long. I sorted everything out in piles of what still fits and what needs to be replaced, took out the old food (if you rotate this often enough you can eat it over the weekend and not have to throw it out for it going stale). Then I made lists of what food items need to be purchased, what items the kids needed and we went shopping for it all.
It takes a bit of work but when it's all finshed, packed up tight and put back in the garage in an "easy to grab" spot, IT FEELS SO GOOD!!! I always hope I'll never have to actually use the kit but it is security knowing it is there!


A few tips and things I learned this time around. Dry soups and dried fruit and jerky are much lighter than canned! We have been weighing our packs down with canned stuff - NO MORE!
We were given a large plastic garbage barrel on wheels from a family member and this makes a nice place to pack a lot of stuff. It will easily fit into the back of the van or if we had to walk with it somewhere (oh please I hope this never happens) we could wheel it.
Thrift stores are great places to find warm coats and things for the kids that hopefully they won't ever have to use. I don't like packing away their nice stuff.
I was thinking this weekend that while the whole topic of disaster and preparedness is on the brain it would be a good time to go over evacuation plans with the kids if ever there was a fire etc..
So I'm wondering. . . do you have a family plan in case of emergency? What do you have in place in case of emergency?