Winter
officially arrives December 21, 2019 in the northern hemisphere. It’s time to
prepare for a potential winter weather emergency if you haven’t already.
God
can protect us from disasters. However, I am confident God wants us to do our
part to prepare for potential disasters, too.
If
an emergency causes your home to lose electrical power, phone service, and safe
tap water, what can you do? What if the emergency also makes your local roads
unsafe due to downed power lines and trees?
One
key is preparing in advance. Seek to protect water pipes from freezing and take
other actions to plan ahead. Your survival may depend on it. One step in this
preparation is assembling an emergency kit.
What to Include in Your Emergency Kit
Keeping
a supply of essential items on hand is important. Two important things to have
are water and food.
Water:
I normally keep about seven 24 packs of ½ liter containers of bottled water on
hand and replace it about every two years (the recommended shelf life on the
bottles). That water could last me three weeks if I use about one gallon per
day. I am single and live alone. Add additional quantities if your household
contains more than one person.
Do
you think you lack adequate space for this? If so, you are probably wrong.
Since I fit it in my studio efficiency apartment of less than 300 square feet,
I think most others (in the U.S. at least) can, too.
Food:
Unless you have alternative means to cook food (and wash utensils) when your
electrical power and natural gas and water are off, I urge you to stock only
prepared food and disposable eating utensils for emergencies. This means foods
like canned vegetables, canned and dried fruits, nuts, dry cereals that are
ready to eat, crackers, etc. Keep a manual can opener on hand for use when
electrical power is unavailable, too.
Other items to include in your
survival kits: Also include flashlights, a
battery-powered radio, batteries, a First Aid kit, any medications you need,
and suitable clothing. For a more complete list, I recommend consulting a webpage on the U.S. government
website, Ready.gov which provides a list of items for an
emergency kit. Their list provides excellent advice as a starting point on what
to include in an emergency kit. But you may desire additional items not on
their list for your personal situation.
The
Ready.gov website also provides much other information about coping with winter
weather emergencies, as well as other emergencies.
Keep at Least a Three Week Supply of
Essentials
Ready.gov
recommends keeping at least a three days’ supply of water, food, and other
items. However, I recommend a three week supply (or more) of food, water,
medicine, and all the other essentials mentioned on the government websites
that apply to your particular situation.
Why
so much? If a major disaster occurs, it may take a few weeks for help to
arrive. Even after a winter storm hits in a city in the United States, it
frequently takes a week or more to restore electrical power to everyone. For
example, in Lexington, Kentucky where I live, a February 2003 ice storm left
about 2/3 of the city without electrical power, many for days, some for over a week,
a few for a couple of weeks or longer.
Furthermore,
in response to that 2003 Lexington winter storm, numerous utility-line repair
people from states far away from Kentucky assisted, because their states were
not affected. Also, the homes, stores, and other businesses in about 1/3 of
Lexington were affected little. What if the outages had been more widespread?
If
a major winter storm, earthquake, flood, or other disaster knocked out
electrical power to much of the United States, there are not enough electrical
line repair people to repair all those downed lines in a few days—or even a few
weeks (or several weeks) in a very severe case. Depending on the type of
disaster, roads may be damaged or flooded, trees may be down, hazardous
chemicals may be released in the area, and all utilities (water, electricity,
natural gas, phone service, etc.) may be cut off. Please prepare to shelter in
your home for at least three weeks in case of an emergency. Board up windows if
extremely high winds are expected.
If
you haven’t read the list on Ready.gov, I urge you to do so. Even if you’ve
read that list or a similar one before, do you remember it, and do you have it
stocked? Most of the items on the list are good for a wide variety of
emergencies, not just relatively common ones like a winter storm, flood,
hurricane, or earthquake.
Carbon Monoxide Detectors and
Generators
Buy
a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector. Several have died from carbon
monoxide poisoning due to improper use of heating sources (generators, charcoal
grills, kerosene heaters, gas heaters, etc.)
Remember,
diesel-powered and gas-powered generators (as well as charcoal grills) must
operate outside your residence. If you have a generator and fuel for it, please
place it outside and ventilate it away from all dwellings. The American
Red Cross website is one of many sources providing more
details on safely using generators.
Please
don’t underestimate the danger of generators. Here in Lexington, Kentucky radio
station WVLK reported some years ago about one family that was smart enough to
put their generator outside and vent it away from their home—but they vented it
toward a neighbor’s house. Fortunately, the neighbors felt ill effects and got
medical attention. They lived. But a
spokesperson for the Lexington Fire Department stated that the carbon monoxide
level in the neighbor’s home was several times the fatal limit, according to
the WVLK news report.
Alternative Heating Source and
Alternative Communication Methods
Try
to have an alternative heating source that requires neither electricity nor
natural gas, especially if you live in an isolated, rural area where a shelter
is not available in case of a winter emergency. A wood stove, coal stove, oil
stove, kerosene heater, fireplace, etc., can work.
Automobile
exhaust is one major source of carbon monoxide, so please do not leave your car
running in a garage or other enclosed area either.
Do
seek to stay warm in cold weather though. If all else fails, putting everyone
in one small room that is isolated from other areas and lighting a couple of
oil lamps and candles will generate some heat. But, please be careful with
fire. Provide at least a little ventilation to avoid either carbon monoxide
poisoning or lack of oxygen due to the oil lamps and candles. And take steps to
prevent a fire hazard. Standard safety procedures—but does anyone always follow
all safety procedures? If we did, many accidents would be prevented. Bundle up
in several layers of clothing to hold in warmth, too. Use blankets, sleeping
bags, etc.
Try
to plan in advance for some way to communicate with others without using a
land-line phone, a cell phone, the Internet, a car, etc. Perhaps a satellite
phone will be available nearby in an emergency center. An amateur radio
operator may also be nearby. But even if such resources exist, you must be able
to contact them. Downed power lines, felled trees, flooded streams, chemical
fumes, and newly opened holes in the earth (in the case of an earthquake) may
all impede your movement. The types of problems depend on the specific
disaster.
Evacuation Plans
In
addition, be prepared to evacuate your home if necessary. Keep the most
essential items of your emergency supply kit handy in backpacks, the trunk of
your car, or ready to put on your bicycle rack with short notice. Include
appropriate clothing.
A
three day supply (or less) of needed items may be all you can manage under
these circumstances, especially if you must walk carrying the load.
If
authorities urge you to evacuate due to weather or some other disaster, be
ready and willing to do so when necessary. Keep your emergency kit packed and
ready to go. If you wait, you may face enormous traffic jams and gas stations
out of fuel—as New Orleans residents did with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Your
evacuation plans need to consider various transportation methods. If airports,
trains, and roads are so damaged (or overcrowded) that you can’t use them to
evacuate, you may need to carry your emergency kit a long distance on a bicycle
rack while bicycling—or in a backpack while walking.
Be
willing to bicycle or walk if necessary, as long as your physical condition
allows it. If those who are physically fit leave on their own, it will free up
emergency response personnel and equipment for the truly needy, such as the
elderly and disabled living alone.
I
own a bicycle with a metal rack on the back and a few backpacks. I keep two
backpacks stocked with emergency supplies that I try to replace if necessary
(due to food close to the expiration date, etc.) once or twice a year. I hope I
never encounter a major disaster, but if I ever do these resources may be very
useful.
Conclusion
I
hope what I’ve written helps you prepare for an emergency if you face one.
Please consider doing further research on this topic, too. For example,
additional advance planning may be especially necessary for disasters like
chemical spills and biological disasters that may require you to seal yourself
in an airtight room for a period. Obviously, due to the limited air supply,
this would hopefully only be for a few hours.
You
can access lots of helpful emergency preparedness resources online, in bookstores,
at the library, via phone, etc.,—if you plan in advance. In fact, the Ready.gov
and FEMA websites contain a wealth of disaster preparedness information.
If
you haven't already done so, please take action now or soon to prepare for
possible disasters. Please do plan ahead! And help others plan ahead, too.
Please urge others to take the steps advocated in this article, too.
NOTES:
This article being submitted to Google Blogger on December 16, 2019 is virtually
identical to one the author submitted to Craft News Report (a website operated
by his friend Paul Craft) on December 14, 2019. That article was adapted from a
chapter in a book the author wrote.
