Saturday, March 12, 2011

Disaster Preparedness in the wake of Tsunamis

The current world news about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan hits home about the importance of having a food and water supply AT HOME. (Assuming one still has a home.) It's been about a day and a half since the disaster first struck, and the top concern after life and death is the already extreme shortage of food and water. Can you imagine what it will be like in a week?

With the collapse of a nuclear reactor and the explosion at the nuclear site, folks nearby are being evacuated. However, those farther away are being advised to stay inside in case of radiation fallout, yet few have any food or water supply to enable survival inside for very long. There are reports of hundreds of people outside grocery stores, drug stores and petrol stations. With roads in shambles, no electricity in many places, and few communication devices working, it will take time to get supplies to those people. Probably as long if not longer than the fiasco in New Orleans following Katrina.

This has put a kink in my own long-time preparedness: the location of many of my supplies. About half the food and most of the water I have stored is in my root cellar, which is a separate building from the house. In the event of a nuclear disaster, it could be unsafe to go outside to collect anything from that building. I have a spring for an alternate water supply, and some filters (or build a fire to boil water), but if it is unsafe to go outside, I'd be mighty thirsty quite soon.

It's something to think about. How prepared are you for an immediate and unexpected disaster?

5 comments:

  1. It does bring up a good point. It may be better to have food and water supplies in a couple different places, just in case, like you said, you can't go out or one place is destroyed etc.

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  2. To that end, I picked up some 2 x 4's today and sheetrock to close off a hallway inside the house that I can utilize for a shallow food storage space. It won't be much, just 3-4' wide and a 10" shelf deep, but it will help.

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  3. Great food for thought. I love engaging in these 'what if' thought exercises, because we can't, possibly, know what might befall us, and we can't prepare for every inevitability, but the more possibilities we've thought about and prepared for, the better off we'll be in the event that *something* happens.

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  4. "Something" always happens, and if we are lucky it is just a bad snow/rain/wind storm and loss of power for a few days.

    Imagining a true disaster is unthinkable.

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  5. I have plenty of food and water in the house as well as crank lanterns and crank radio and can cook on my gas stovetop without electricity. My problem is if I had to evacuate, I would be SOL - I have no vehicle and would not leave my animals.

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