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ShannonJ
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Keeping an emergency bag ready to go in case of a need to evacuate. Sometimes those evacuation orders can come without much notice. A few changes of clothes, water filter, water bottles, snacks and small games for the kids, backpacking meals, diapers, wipes, shoes, extra emergency radio that can charge your cell phones, cash.
I rearranged our camping gear to an easily accessible place in the garage for grab-n-go convenience.
Decide whether you will bring your pets and how you will care for them.
Know where all of your important papers are located and anything else you would consider essential. Consider keeping them all in a easy to locate tote.
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~Shannon
Mom of dd 12, ds 9, & dd 5
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JodieLyn
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Mackfam wrote:
CrunchyMom wrote:
Mackfam wrote:
** Several (at least 5-10) of those big, square, ice substitute freezer blocks - (like this) kept in your freezer at all times! If you have a packed freezer these won't be as necessary in your big freezer, but if it isn't full, the ice packs will keep your freezer colder longer. We also used them at night in our fridge. For security and safety reasons, we did not run our generator at night. So we unplugged the appliances and came up with this to maintain coolness for the period of time they would be off power: We transferred 5 or 6 of those big ice substitute blocks to our fridge, spacing them out, and they helped keep the contents cold for the night. Our fridge worked very well like this for us.
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You can also fill milk jugs with water to freeze for this purpose. |
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Yes. They just take up a lot more space! |
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Which is good if you have the space, a full freezer maintains it's temp much better than even a partially empty one.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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CrunchyMom
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JodieLyn wrote:
Mackfam wrote:
CrunchyMom wrote:
Mackfam wrote:
** Several (at least 5-10) of those big, square, ice substitute freezer blocks - (like this) kept in your freezer at all times! If you have a packed freezer these won't be as necessary in your big freezer, but if it isn't full, the ice packs will keep your freezer colder longer. We also used them at night in our fridge. For security and safety reasons, we did not run our generator at night. So we unplugged the appliances and came up with this to maintain coolness for the period of time they would be off power: We transferred 5 or 6 of those big ice substitute blocks to our fridge, spacing them out, and they helped keep the contents cold for the night. Our fridge worked very well like this for us.
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You can also fill milk jugs with water to freeze for this purpose. |
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Yes. They just take up a lot more space! |
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Which is good if you have the space, a full freezer maintains it's temp much better than even a partially empty one. |
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Right. I was thinking that you want your freezer full, but now I realize you were talking about transferring to the fridge, so that would make the blocks handy for tucking around things in the fridge, though, I suppose you could do the same with ziplocks in a pinch if you needed to.
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Lindsay
Five Boys(6/04) (6/06) (9/08)(3/11),(7/13), and 1 girl (5/16)
My Symphony
[URL=http://mysymphonygarden.blogspot.com/]Lost in the Cosmos[/UR
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pumpkinmom
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JodieLyn wrote:
Out of curiosity did you continue to have "city water"? or was what you filled right off what you had to work with? I know that they'd still have pumps and such to keep it flowing but they also have back up since water still flows during a power outage.. though I suppose as fuel got scarce that that would go down too, not to mention if there was severe damage to the system.
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We are on city water. As I understand it you will have water until the water tower runs dry. Our city has a well, so with no electric there is no pumping. If power goes out here we fill the bathtub (to use for flushing if water does stop) and containers for drinking water. Our electric has never been out long enough and we have never ran out of water.
Thanks for bumping up this post. We need to be better prepared! One thing we don't have and I don't know what to do about it is a source of heat.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
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Angel
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Just wondering about the bike helmets and the shoes, as we're in a tornado-prone area, too, with no real safe room.  Do you keep a second set of bike helmets in your safe room, with shoes? My boys would spend half an hour just looking for their shoes. Or do you have the kids put them on at the beginning of the bad weather, no matter what time of day or night?
Seems like so much of our bad weather comes right at bedtime!!
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Angela
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Barb.b
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GOod topic. I haven't read through all the responses yet but wanted to add - A friend said she heard it important to send some copies of forms of identification to someone you know (obviously trust too) in another state. The thought being - if your house and belongings are gone - it is a problem if you are without identification. The story she saw had someone who couldn't get some form of aid without it. . . .
I haven't done this. I do have birth certificates and passports in the bank vault and some in a fire safe file cabinet here at home. I don't know if thats enough!
Just a thought. . . .
Barb
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Mackfam
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Angel wrote:
Just wondering about the bike helmets and the shoes, as we're in a tornado-prone area, too, with no real safe room. Do you keep a second set of bike helmets in your safe room, with shoes? My boys would spend half an hour just looking for their shoes. Or do you have the kids put them on at the beginning of the bad weather, no matter what time of day or night?
Seems like so much of our bad weather comes right at bedtime!! |
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You ARE just right around the corner from me, Angela, so I know you guys have the same tornado stuff to deal with!
We don't keep extras of shoes and helmets - but there is generally enough warning that weather has good potential to get ugly that I have kids line them up on a bench in our hallway if it's gonna be *one of those days*.
Tornadoes generally move from the southwest corner of your home to the northeast (you've been to my house - the southwest corner is my kitchen). Our safe room is on the opposite side of my house and it's actually just my big closet. I have always, always thought it was crazy that practically no one here has a basement - yet we live in a common tornado zone. 
I do feel better after having lived through two tornadoes, both fairly small on the scale but also a common size around here. Our house did fine and we only had minimal damage. And we don't stay in the "safe-room" for long so it doesn't have to be big. If you're house is in the path of a tornado, you KNOW it! So you get the family ready and if it's coming your way you get everyone in for the few minutes it takes to pass overhead. Otherwise, we just get prepared to move quickly.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19 , ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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MarilynW
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This is a timely thread. We have had two major weather events within 4 months - lost power for 4 days in the summer and then 24 hours with Hurricane Sandy. We have emergency supplies and procedures in place, but then when emergencies happen, we realize that we need to do more. I had always been fearful of winter emergencies, but the 100 degree plus days with no power in the summer were just awful - no means of getting cool, sleeping at night was impossible, we lost our entire fridge and freezer contents. This week, on the other hand, we were so cold with no power.
I have a question about generators for Jen or anyone else. To get a generator or not 'tis the question that we are discussing right now. Our general consensus is no because we think that they are expensive to buy, expensive to run, really loud and obnoxious for our neighbors, and give off horrible fumes.Also space is at a premium for us and we would have to store generator and fuel. We do not need a sump pump (house on a hill) and I don't think the generator would cover heat/a/c which I would really like. So the main purpose of the generator would be the freezer and then our cellphones/laptops. And for the latter this may not be worth it as often the wireless internet/telephone/cellphone circuits are down too.
So I am investigating ways to work around the generator - I do keep big packs of ice in the freezer now. I have been scared off really stocking my freezer. I am trying to keep more freeze dried food stores.
We don't have an operational fireplace (because of respiratory allergies) - but I am wondering if we have it inspected, cleaned and ready to go, and keep a small supply of firewood to use if we need it.
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MarilynW
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Sharing some things not mentioned that we have found useful to have on hand:
1. Light sticks - especially for children who cannot fall asleep in the dark.
2. Sterno cans with a little stove - great for making hot beverages when it is cold outside. Can be used in the house
3. Emergency notebook - with all the information you need that may be on your phone, computer etc. I realized in the summer that many phone numbers were stored on my phone and I did not have them written down. Good to grab if you have to evacuate.
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Marilyn
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MarilynW
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Question for Jen re the Big Berkey:
We have been looking at this. How much space does it take up? Do you use it only for emergencies or for daily use? I was bothered that it would be too big for my kitchen counters - but I guess if we are just using it for emergencies, this would not be a problem. I was wondering about getting the travel Berkey instead?
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Angel
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That's interesting about how tornadoes move... I didn't know that. The one closet we do use during severe weather happens to be on the eastern side of the house, so that's good. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold all of us. Most of the kids can squeeze in with a few pillows and a weather radio, but the adults and the 16 yo don't fit. We had *one* other interior room -- another closet -- but when Andy went outside and looked at the roof, he discovered that our chimney isn't real and is just sitting on top of the roof directly above that closet. We figured maybe it wasn't such a safe place if bricks were going to rain down on our heads. A year or two before we moved here a tornado did go right through our neighborhood, on the ground, and actually I think it topped many of the trees in our backyard.
Anyway, whenever the sirens go off, I tend to feel a little nervous.
Right now I'm trying to think about getting prepared for winter weather, since one ice storm can cripple our area for a week (Jen, I know you know what I'm talking about here, too). I feel a little better about our preparedness in that case since we have the big woodstove along with the boy scout camp stove, etc. (Although the camp stove needs to be moved to the garage, as Shannon suggested.) A generator is also on our list of big things to acquire this year. I do have a problem keeping our pantry fully stocked, though, which is partly a problem with the amount of food that can be eaten around here sometimes and also our changing diet of the past year or so (to paleo/gluten-free). I'm mostly okay on *ingredients* - although we just ate the last of our big container of rice -- but the canned and boxed convenience food that would be better to cook on, say, a campstove is something I *don't* have stocked. I need to check out some good gluten-free alternatives.
We don't eat much convenience food on a regular basis, though, so I often find it being pushed to the back of the cabinet until its expiration date is past and I have to throw it out. Do y'all eat from your pantry and rotate the stock, give non-perishables you're not eating to food pantries before their expiration date, or??? At the moment, we have enough in our freezer to be ok *if* we could eat from it, but not enough in our pantry.
I do have a book that I bought a few years ago which is very helpful for many different emergency scenarios:
Just in Case: How to be Self-Sufficient when the Unexpected Happens
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Angela
Mom to 9, 7 boys and 2 girls
Three Plus Two
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JodieLyn
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MarilynW wrote:
Sharing some things not mentioned that we have found useful to have on hand:
1. Light sticks - especially for children who cannot fall asleep in the dark.
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Have you seen the "glow sticks" near the flash lights.. they come in various colors and one click the flashlight comes on, next click the glow comes on next click the glow stays and the flashlight goes off and the next click and it flashes. They're right around $5 so could be more economical than one use light sticks.. and can have multiple uses.
We get one of these for traveling in the winter with a baby. We've found that from about 6 months until somewhere a bit past a year old that when it gets dark and they aren't sleeping that having to sit in a dark car while traveling incite continual crying/screaming.. We get one of these in red (disrupts night vision least) and duct tape it to a seat so that the little ones have some light and the rest of us have some peace 
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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Mackfam
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MarilynW wrote:
| I have a question about generators for Jen or anyone else. To get a generator or not 'tis the question that we are discussing right now. Our general consensus is no because we think that they are expensive to buy, expensive to run, really loud and obnoxious for our neighbors, and give off horrible fumes.Also space is at a premium for us and we would have to store generator and fuel. We do not need a sump pump (house on a hill) and I don't think the generator would cover heat/a/c which I would really like. So the main purpose of the generator would be the freezer and then our cellphones/laptops. And for the latter this may not be worth it as often the wireless internet/telephone/cellphone circuits are down too. |
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:: A generator IS loud, but your neighbors probably won't care because typically (or at least around here in the south - maybe this is different regionally? - everyone has theirs running in a loss of power event. They're outside and you'll keep doors between you, so while the sound isn't completely muffled, you can certainly hear things and people in your house.
:: They are an investment, but the question as to whether or not they're worth the investment will be up to the individual family. It's a little like an insurance policy. For us, they are worth it. We can power a variety of appliances at different times which are helpful at maintaining a quality of life. Most times we think of losing power for a few hours, or maybe the better part of a day. Certainly, you don't *need* a generator for those instances. When you have no power for weeks rather than hours or days, that quality of life that a generator helps facilitate becomes important. If you wait until *the event* to decide that you really want to find a generator, expect to find them scarce and even more expensive. Additionally, if you have invested in stocking a freezer, the loss of that food will pay for the generator almost instantly. Also, running our washer off the generator became important rather quickly!
:: You would not be able to power your a/c and heat with your generator. It would be too big a draw. You'd have to research the pull your a/c-heat would make to find the appropriately sized generator...which is likely to be large! Then, you can't simply plug your HVAC system into your generator like you would an appliance, you'll need to have an electrician wire your generator into your house electrical supply. You're starting to talk involved work. $$$ Typically, you won't be using your generator to supply HVAC.
Marilyn wrote:
| So I am investigating ways to work around the generator - I do keep big packs of ice in the freezer now. |
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That will buy you about 24 hours, maybe a little less. After that, things will begin to thaw. If you have a power outage event that goes beyond 24 hours you need to be prepared to do without refrigerated foods if you can't power your fridge/freezer, and you won't be able to stock them as needed because local stores won't be able to supply them. Of course, if you have lots of snow and freezing temps that could help. It'd be a gamble though.
Marilyn wrote:
| I have been scared off really stocking my freezer. I am trying to keep more freeze dried food stores. |
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This is absolutely fine if your family normally eats freeze dried food. What we found is that atypical food types can be more wasteful if your family gets tired quickly or balks overall than just investing the money to protect your typical family eating fare. In a prolonged survival situation, our kids were looking for signs of normalcy and there is little you can supply except for food. It's way outside their norm and stressful, so being able to provide comfort foods was important for all of us. It was great to have plenty of bacon, sausages, and meats to pull out of our freezer as well as our stock of frozen veggies. It meant that we could cook our normal variety of foods.
Marilyn wrote:
| We don't have an operational fireplace (because of respiratory allergies) - but I am wondering if we have it inspected, cleaned and ready to go, and keep a small supply of firewood to use if we need it. |
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I might suggest checking into getting it retrofitted with a clean burning propane gas set of logs. I've heard of places around here that do that! Another investment, but well worth it and an excellent source of heat if needed! You don't need a huge tank - we keep (2) 100# propane tanks for our gas logs. We only need one, but we have two after our storm/survival episode because we wanted to be able to always have one completely full tank.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Nov 02 2012 at 5:44pm | IP Logged
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MarilynW wrote:
Question for Jen re the Big Berkey:
We have been looking at this. How much space does it take up? Do you use it only for emergencies or for daily use? I was bothered that it would be too big for my kitchen counters - but I guess if we are just using it for emergencies, this would not be a problem. I was wondering about getting the travel Berkey instead? |
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Ours is not the travel size one and it takes up about 12" circumference sitting on the counter. It is fairly tall. I only use ours in case of emergency. I'm not familiar with the travel size one, but just know that it does take some time to drip because it's gravity fed.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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lapazfarm
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| Posted: Nov 02 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged
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Our only real issue here would be winter storms/power outages.
Preparedness includes:
--having plenty of wood stockpiled for the woodstove, which we can also cook on if need be.
--having water stored indoors (we get our water from an outdoors water storage tank, which would freeze solid if our power went out mid-winter because the tank heater wouldn't be functioning.) So we have a large number of gallons of bottled water stored under the stairs, and would fill the tub for flushing if we knew ahead of time there would be a storm/outage. Of course we could always melt snow on the woodstove if necessary.
--flushing may end up being a problem due to frozen outlet pipes (heat tape not functioning). If so, we have lots of bushes and trees and we all know how to "go" in the woods if it comes to that, (though dropping your drawers at negative temps is not fun).
--refrigeration is not a problem here. We can just put our freezer food outdoors and it will stay frozen solid. For cool foods we can fill a cooler with snow.
Once the power comes back on we can assess the damage due to frozen pipes, pumps, etc. And there will be damage, it's just a matter of how much.
One other thing:
--having a car emergency break-down kit is essential in the winter here. It needs to include the usual breakdown gear (flares,tire blocks,jack,tire iron, shovel,etc) but also extreme cold-weather survival gear like wool blankets,space blankets, extra warm socks, matches,candles, hand warmers(aka "hotties") bottled water, and energy bars. If you break down at 40 below, it doesn't take long to freeze to death waiting for help to come by on remote roads.
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Theresa
us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
LaPaz Home Learning
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Mackfam
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| Posted: Nov 02 2012 at 6:01pm | IP Logged
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Angel wrote:
| Anyway, whenever the sirens go off, I tend to feel a little nervous. |
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I know what you mean!
Angel wrote:
| Right now I'm trying to think about getting prepared for winter weather, since one ice storm can cripple our area for a week (Jen, I know you know what I'm talking about here, too). |
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I do! We haven't had one in a few years, but an ice storm takes power down for us for at least a week!
Angel wrote:
| I feel a little better about our preparedness in that case since we have the big woodstove along with the boy scout camp stove, etc. (Although the camp stove needs to be moved to the garage, as Shannon suggested.) |
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I wish we could have a woodstove! My in laws have one that is tied into their house ductwork and can be used to heat the entire house if needed. A dream!!
It is helpful to have a shelf in the garage with the camp stove, necessary propane, and a bin of emergency supplies so they're easy to get to and you know they're stocked.
Angel wrote:
| I do have a problem keeping our pantry fully stocked, though, which is partly a problem with the amount of food that can be eaten around here sometimes and also our changing diet of the past year or so (to paleo/gluten-free). I'm mostly okay on *ingredients* - although we just ate the last of our big container of rice -- but the canned and boxed convenience food that would be better to cook on, say, a campstove is something I *don't* have stocked. I need to check out some good gluten-free alternatives. |
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We have a few convenience foods here, Angela, but I'll be honest - we didn't cook many of them during that time. We stuck with typical foods you can make on a cooktop: bacon and eggs, hamburgers, we made spaghetti (which we make with gluten free noodles too), pasta salads made with loads of our frozen veggies from our freezer (again with gluten free pasta we boiled on the camp stove), oatmeal. So, again, we stuck with our typical foods and did just fine on the little camp cooktop. I bet you're closer than you think on your pantry stocks (probably just still working around diet changes and stock) - just try to keep a fairly good amount of basic staples that you NORMALLY eat on hand.
Angel wrote:
| Do y'all eat from your pantry and rotate the stock, give non-perishables you're not eating to food pantries before their expiration date, or??? |
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Yes. Exactly this. I keep a master list of Costco items and do well restocking from there. I did find that a good supply of canned beans was really helpful for us. I could add it to pasta salads, tortillas with melted cheese for lunches, and a variety of other things. It was a good shelf-stable source of protein.
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Nov 02 2012 at 6:25pm | IP Logged
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you typically cook canned and boxed food on a campstove.. not because it's easier but because you use it camping and it's easier to transport convenience foods than ingredients
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
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MarilynW
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| Posted: Nov 03 2012 at 8:25am | IP Logged
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Thanks Jen and Jodie for responses and ideas.
I am considered to have a "preparedness mentality" but I do struggle with a few things:
1. My inability to deal with discomfort for a few days. Before college I did mission work in Africa and I was so humbled by the nuns, priests and lay missionaries who lived simply and with limited electricity, water, food - I found it hard then, and am even more "soft" now. My kids deal well with the emergencies that we have had - for them it is a great big adventure, and they are maybe better at the "offering up discomforts" than I am. Instead of wanting to constantly be comfortable, maybe I should learn to do without for short periods of time.
2. Related to this - I feel we are too dependent on elecricity etc. Those who live in the countryside etc are much more self-sufficient. As well as prepared for the emergencies, I would like a more self-reliant lifestyle - though how to figure how to do this with limited space and time.
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Marilyn
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Angel
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I recently ran across a resource I thought would be a good addition to this thread:
The Cooking Traditional Foods website has a lot of great information about storing real foods, in quantities up to a year's food supply. Her husband has apparently suffered through extremely long periods of unemployment in the past few years, and they have lived primarily on their stored food (plus a backyard flock of chickens) for at least as long as 11 months. (Which is sort of a sobering reminder that not all disasters are "natural".) She also has celiac disease, so her storage is by necessity gluten (and largely, I think) dairy free.
I found the site itself a little confusing to navigate, but that could be because it's loading really slowly for me. I originally ended up there by searching for "real food on a budget". If you search for "real food storage" on the site, lots of blog posts will come up. She also does podcasts and she provides a storage spreadsheet and list of bulk suppliers, both of which are very helpful.
The spreadsheet (which is free to download) helps you figure out how much you should be stocking for your family to supply one month, three months, six months, or a year of food. You enter all the people in your family according to age and gender, and whether or not there are any pregnant or nursing mothers, and it calculates how many servings you should prepare and then multiplies it out for various time periods. (For my family of 9, for instance, we should have 8.8 servings for every meal... but I'd go ahead and round that to 9 anyway.)
She also has an ebook with a lot of storage information collected in one place, plus a large set of recipes. (All the meat recipes are designed for fresh *or* canned meat.)
Real Food Storage Recipes
The recipes are all traditional/real food/gluten free, which I was happy to find ... especially her recipes for gluten-free sourdough.
Anyway, just throwing this out there. So much of the food storage/emergency prep information seems to be geared toward boxed and prepared food that it was nice to find a site geared toward traditional food storage. 
__________________
Angela
Mom to 9, 7 boys and 2 girls
Three Plus Two
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Are you ready for an emergency?
