I had an interesting conversation with one of my grandsons this morning, my wife read us an article about disasters. The North Korean nuclear bomb threat in particular, in the article stated that we should all have at least a 14-day supply of emergency supplies on hand. I asked my grandson what he thought of all this and if he had ever thought of situations where he would have to fend for himself. The scenario I asked you about is a very real situation for people living in an earthquake country. (I must say that I am not in the least bit worried about a nuclear attack from North Korea, all I will say is that it is all bluster and exaggeration.) However, living 50 miles from San Francisco in California’s Greater Delta, the possibility of a major earthquake is very real. I asked him if he was in the city and there was a big earthquake that knocked out all the public services, what would he do? He told me that he would leave town immediately, OK, I guess that was my answer. The second question I had was where would he go, and of course he said our house, which is perfectly fine with us. So I asked him how he would get out of the city, he answered me by bus, train, car, walking and so on, I told him that there would be many people with the same idea. There are 3 ways to get out of San Francisco, 1) The Bay Bridge. 2) The Golden Gate Bridge 3) Highway 101 through South San Francisco. All overcrowded on a normal business day, during an emergency evacuation it would become an impossible situation in my opinion. In my opinion, the first few thousand vehicles could go out, then with breakdowns and accidents, the roads would quickly fill up. Then he told me he was leaving, I just asked “where? Oakland? Hayward? In other words, in my opinion, no one is going anywhere after the ‘big one’ happens, we’ve been told over and over again.” it will happen We ended the talk with no solution other than a better understanding of what can happen, grandkids sometimes take the train into town for a day, so it was a worthwhile conversation (they’re all in their 20s Although we didn’t come to a conclusive decision on our discussion, it did raise a more relevant question: “If a major disaster happened and you were at home, what would you grab on the way out?”
I’m thinking of a wildfire, a house fire, a flood, an earthquake, or any other situation that wipes out all of our utilities. 4-1/2 years ago, my neighbors house burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Houses on both sides were damaged by fire, one was 80% destroyed, and although it was never rebuilt, it remains burned to this day. helmet. If the prevailing wind had been blowing (it wasn’t) and if it was dry (thankfully it was torrential rain), chances are my house would have burned down too. It is an unsettling sight to see neighbors, very good neighbors, running around in their night clothes with garden hoses trying to save their houses. It was an extremely dangerous situation, a neighbor was in her nightgown and flip flops 30 feet from the house totally involved, she was next to a big pine tree. I could see the tree burst into flames possibly seriously injuring her, it didn’t happen but the tree was destroyed by the heat. The fact is that the week before I saw her spraying the tree with her garden hose, of course I asked her what it was. She replied that she has an allergy and that pine was full of pollen, she has an allergy to that tree and they were thinking of removing it. The tree was soaking wet that night and probably saved her from serious injury or worse. After the fire department arrived (we’re in a very rural area in the middle of nowhere, so the response usually takes at least 20 minutes), I realized we had no emergency supplies, the neighbors who responded they had their night clothes and nothing else. I started thinking about preparation and the question I asked myself was, “If that was me, what would I grab to get out?” So I began to form the basis of my disaster emergency plan and what I would need to put together for a home emergency preparedness kit. That event inspired me to create a website dedicated to helping people become as self-sufficient as possible. Then I came up with the following list:
1) Get up and get dressed, keep a set of clothes next to the bed, shoes, pants and a shirt.
2) Getting my 95-year-old mother-in-law out of bed, assigned to my wife or me.
3) Find my emergency backpack that contains my laptop and all the information on my website, if I lose it it could be a disaster.
4) Put my wheelchair away, okay, get it out if I can, if there’s a fire upstairs, I’ll lose both of my mobile devices.
5) Grab my ukulele, guitars and banjo
6) The tower computer above, only the tower
7) Throw all these things in the elevator and then
8) I get my big mobility scooter out of there, I leave it on the back porch by the door.
9) Oh the crazy dog, good grievance that will be a challenge
10) All the car keys!
That’s not even the full list! After I put it in writing, reality slapped me, like in a B-rated western, “what the hell am I thinking?” If he were to take all of those things, in fact, if he could gather them all in a short time, it would be a major task. By my estimation, after watching videos of fires made by various fire departments, I have concluded that I have one minute to evacuate. It occurred to me a minute after watching a video of a Christmas tree made by a fire department. A small building was built with a replica of the living room containing a Christmas tree, a sofa, a chair and a small table. The string of lights was faulty, after the lights came on it immediately started smoking, then the wiring burst into flames. The entire room was engulfed in less than a minute, a minute tops to evacuate my home, which puts a whole new perspective on my idea of what I had time to gather and escape. If you were to attempt to carry all of that, you would need a truck and trailer, it would have to be set up at all times and ready to load. Wait a minute, I modified my list by a substantial amount, now it is:
1) Get Grandma
2) Put the dog on a leash
3) Take my emergency preparedness kit (it contains my laptop)
Get out of here! If I can walk in my wheelchair that’s fine, if not they made millions this year alone and I have insurance. Same with my ukulele, banjo and guitars, too many of each were made this year. There is nothing more important than me, grandmother, wife, dog and Even now leaving my laptop would not be a major problem since I have placed all my files in the “cloud”, Google+, I can retrieve them from any computer at any place as long as I have my passwords. Everything else is replaceable, everything my only priority is grandma, wife, dog, then me, walk out the door, someone will call the fire department if I don’t, just walk out in less than a minute. In conclusion, I hope I have inspired some people to start putting together a family disaster plan, as well as putting together or buying a pre-assembled home emergency preparedness kit. FEMA recommends a 72-hour kit, a 14-day kit is a much better preparedness kit. That is my opinion for this fact, my neighbors are not and will not be prepared for a disaster of this type. My personal desire to be prepared is to get to a point where we have a lot for ourselves and more to help other people when the need arises that I think will arise. I’ll never be able to deny someone a drink of water or something warm to use, just because they didn’t prepare doesn’t mean they’re anything but “human.” Events can easily happen at any time of the day or night, doesn’t it seem like most unpleasant events happen during the worst storm of the year in the middle of the night?