Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Make a Plan Redux

What did you do this weekend while watching the folks in NJ? My wife turned to me and said "Its been awhile since we looked at our plan and stuff, I would feel better if we took some time this weekend and refreshed."  And she was right. So what did we do:
  1. Pulled out our food go bag and dusted it off (it was pretty dusty too) checked the dates on the food, went through the bag to refresh in our minds what was in it. Got her go-kit from the car and checked it.  
  2. Then we went in the kitchen and took food out of the cabinet and looked at the food in the freezer and figured out how many days of food we have. My wife pointed out a few things she wishes we had in the cabinet.  I told her then we need to make that a permanent food stuff we buy.  I don't want to store food, it goes bad, better to work it through your meal planning.  We talked about keeping the freezer closed, but cooking the meat first and saving the cans for later.  Luckily we have a gas stove, while its not a for sure that there will be gas, depending on the disaster but its better than electricity.  (Note: just as an added note we talked about not heating the air with the burners- my wife is not an emergency manager)
  3. Then we talked about our evacuation plan, our out of state contacts, how to get to the airport without the freeways in play. Our in Seattle locations to meet and/or leave messages.
  4. Looked at our red packages where we keep cash and important documents we can pull and run with.
  5. The last thing we did was check our document on the web.  We both have important documents (DD214, Insurance forms, Copies of passports, mortgage numbers, etc) scanned and placed in a couple of secure online locations.  One is Drop box, the other is a email account with a tough password (not my pet or place I was born) 
So now its your turn, lets learn from what we are watching in NJ and make sure we are ready.  Lead by Example.  Then forward to your non - emergency manegement friends and family.

Disasterdave