Preparedness Drills

[AnnaRaven]

I'm curious how many folks here do emergency drills (fire drills, earthquake drills, preparedness drills) in your home or with your local community.

Back in Minnesota, we used to get storms knocking out power every year or so, which gave us an opportunity to regular reminder to keep our preparations up to date. Here, it's not common for the storms to do that, but an earthquake could happen at any time and could be major. So it seems like it would be useful to do a simulation or drill, to be better prepared. I attended the local community emergency response training given by the city this spring and next month they're going to have a call-out to their members to check in at the local center, and do an exercise in assessing neighborhoods for damage.

I talked with my family, and we decided that same day, we're going to do a drill at home to simulate an earthquake knocking out the utilities. We'll be shutting off the electricity and water mains, pretending the gas is off, and I will be biking to the call-out (since roads might be blocked if there's an earthquake). We'll be using the afternoon when I get back to go through our emergency supplies, and finding out where we're missing stuff. I'm hoping it'll help us identify areas we're missing and what we wish we had. We will turn electric and water back on in the morning, so it'll be a short drill. But I'm hoping it'll be useful.

Has anyone else done anything like this, and what was your experience like? Did you find many holes in your preparedness? If you've done it more than once, how often do you do it? Any tips on doing them?

 

[k0xxx]

I am the Amateur Radio Emergency Coordinator for our county. I work with the county and state Offices of Emergency Management and we have yearly exercises. Every few years we'll have exercises involving other states as well as National agencies. This year we participated in National Exercise 2011 (NLE11) which involved 8 states (if I remember correctly), as well as FEMA, DHS, and other Federal Agencies. My wife, son, and daughter are Hams also, and they too participate.

We have enough local events, like tornadoes and ice storms, to keep us up to date on our family preparedness. Several different disasters over the last 10 years have provided us plenty of practice at getting by for weeks with no power, with only minimal inconvenience. We are well stocked and have compiled and keep two "Emergency Procedures" binders handy to help us to calmly check off what needs to be done when an event takes place.

I realize that we are on the extreme end of preparedness, but we have always had the attitude that when an emergency hits the community, we want to be among those giving help and among those receiving it. My parents operated Red Cross shelters, and I learned at an early age that I did not want to end up one of those stuck in one.

 

[k15n1]

I have an ameture radio license (KC0OLL) and I'm interested in the role of ameture radio in the event of emergencies. I got my license for the frequency privilages when I was studying as an engineer and haven't used it much. What's the minimum equipment that I would need to be helpful? How do I find whoever coordinates emergency drills in Rochester, MN?

 

[i_am2bz]

I have an ameture radio license (KC0OLL) and I'm interested in the role of ameture radio in the event of emergencies. I got my license for the frequency privilages when I was studying as an engineer and haven't used it much. What's the minimum equipment that I would need to be helpful? How do I find whoever coordinates emergency drills in Rochester, MN?

I am interested in Ham, too; maybe Mark & others on the forum could start another thread dealing specifically with this...? How to go about getting a license, what kind of equipment is best, etc.

As for drills, I admit I couldn't do the "turn off the lights & water" thing; I would be too tempted to cheat.

 

[moolie]

Our main concerns when it comes to emergency preparedness are blizzards and wild fires, so we need to be both prepared to hunker down and take care of ourselves as well as to evacuate.

There is a website called foodstoragemadeeasy (dot) net that recently asked their readers to take part in what they call the "seven day challenge", a series of one-day "emergency" events that were emailed out. I didn't get the emails, but found the website a while back in the midst of organizing our emergency supplies and our family did play along for the challenge. I'm sure you could go back and do the challenge after the fact to check each area of preparedness.

We found that we are pretty ready for power and water outages, to take care of our sanitary needs, and that we are nicely able to evacuate on short notice. We live in an arid area and have full water barrels under our 4 gutter downspouts (for non-potable use although I'm sure we could filter and boil in a pinch) and we have a 55 gallon water storage barrel in our basement (should get at least one more should we be waterless for more than a week). We also live near a creek from which we could gather water and purify it. We have crank flashlights, a solar-powered camping lantern/radio (saving for a crank model as well), and lots of candles/holders for light. We also actually have a bucket toilet and a couple of solar showers because my girls and I are Girl Guides (like Girl Scouts in the US) and we camp a lot throughout the year.

We would be ok with cooking without power because we have plenty of camping equipment and fuel plus a bbq with two tanks, but our only alternate method of heating our home is a not-too-efficient fireplace in our family room. We could make it work for a week or so if we blocked off the doorways out of the room with blankets and all huddled in that room, but our winter temps typically go down to the minus mid 20s Celcius.

Our lack of an alternate method of heating our home during an extended blackout (because we have a gas furnace with an electric fan) is our weakest area. We all have good down sleeping bags (and 4 good tents of various sizes) and know how to winter camp, but that's not really a long-term solution. We personally determined that we should save up for and purchase a wood stove, or wood cookstove, for our basement as an alternate heat source--which will also save us money as we have access to wood (just have to cut and haul).

Food-wise, I was brought up by a very stocked-up Mom (we lived on a remote island and the grocery barge didn't always come in every week) and I was taught how to preserve and cook by my Grandma and Oma, so we have plenty of food. Much is in the freezer, but I have been working on diversifying this storage by canning more meat (although most is frozen) and getting into dehydrating. Lots of canned fruit, tomatoes, and meals--but most of our veggies are frozen rather than dehydrated.

We are even prepared to evacuate our cat: her pet carrier is ready to go with 2 small stainless steel bowls, a gallon jug of water, a gallon pail of dry food plus a sample bag of cat treats (our pet store regularly gives us these), a gallon pail of kitty litter, and a small litter pan.

k0xxx, I'd be very interested to know what types of things you have in your "emergency procedures" binders--would you mind sharing the types of things you have organized? I'm sure many of us would be very thankful for any advice you can offer

We have a "grab" list by the back door coat closet (no coats, just shelves) where we store all of our camping equipment and emergency 72-hour kits, and we do have a bag containing our important documents stored there along with a box of our photo negs/old family photos not scanned yet and a hard drive of all our digital photos, but I'd love to be more organized as I'm sure we haven't thought of everything yet.

 

[AnnaRaven]

I am the Amateur Radio Emergency Coordinator for our county. I work with the county and state Offices of Emergency Management and we have yearly exercises. Every few years we'll have exercises involving other states as well as National agencies. This year we participated in National Exercise 2011 (NLE11) which involved 8 states (if I remember correctly), as well as FEMA, DHS, and other Federal Agencies. My wife, son, and daughter are Hams also, and they too participate.

We have enough local events, like tornadoes and ice storms, to keep us up to date on our family preparedness. Several different disasters over the last 10 years have provided us plenty of practice at getting by for weeks with no power, with only minimal inconvenience. We are well stocked and have compiled and keep two "Emergency Procedures" binders handy to help us to calmly check off what needs to be done when an event takes place.

I realize that we are on the extreme end of preparedness, but we have always had the attitude that when an emergency hits the community, we want to be among those giving help and among those receiving it. My parents operated Red Cross shelters, and I learned at an early age that I did not want to end up one of those stuck in one.

What a great idea. I'll have to work on something like that for us.

 

[i_am2bz]

Wow, moolie, nice job!! Sounds like you are really well-prepared. Glad you included your kitty; that's my weak spot - if I had to evacuate, I don't know how good of a job I'd do moving 2 dogs, 6 cats, & 3 chickens. :/

Great reminder about your important documents; mine are all in a lockbox, I just have to remember to grab it before I go!

 

[moolie]

Thanks i_am2bz

I totally can't take credit for the kitty preparedness--I got the idea from the "seven day challenge" that I mentioned, someone commented that they had their kitty carrier all ready to go like that so we set ours up similarly. We had all the stuff, just not together in one place.

The challenges really made us think about things. We are used to doing things differently while camping, but not so much at home. It was the little things that got us--it's really an in-grained compunction to turn on light switches etc. even though you know the power is off. It's such a habit.

It's taken us a few months to get this prepared as well, our kick-start was a wildfire that decimated a town in northern AB back in May. We live two blocks from the edge of the city, where there is both grassland and forest that are tinder dry for most of the year since we get so little rainfall/snow throughout the year. So we started with the government of Canada preparedness website http://www.getprepared.gc.ca/index-eng.aspx and went from there, finding more sites as we googled. There are a lot of people out there with advice, and most of it is pretty good from our point of view, it just takes some searching.

 

[moolie]

I'm re-posting something that I posted a while back in Savingdogs' thread about fire preparedness, in case it is helpful here:

The 72-hour kit at school is something that perhaps others don't do (and may not be feasible for younger kids) but in case they get stuck at school due to blizzard or similar, our 2 teenagers each have 3 neoprene dollar store pencil cases in a drawstring gym strip bag in their lockers at their schools containing:

72-Hour Emergency Kit: Flashlight/batteries, Hand-warmers, Gloves, Toque, Socks, Matches, Candle, First Aid kit, Tylenol, Emergency blanket, Sewing kit, Duct Tape, Notebook/pen, Deck of cards, City map, $20 in coins, Emergency contact list

6 Water bottles and a 72-Hour Emergency Food Kit: 6 Granola Bars, 3 Trail Mix, 6 Fruit Leather, 3 cans Pork & Beans, 3 Fruit Cups, small Stainless Steel Bowl, Spoon, Emergency contact list

72-Hour Personal Hygiene Kit: Toothbrush, Bar of Soap, Washcloth Tablets, Sanitary Pads, individually wrapped Wet Wipes, Hand Sanitizer, Q-tips, Tissues, Emergency contact list

Each kid has an Emergency Contact list in each of the 3 kits as well as in their wallets with phone numbers for all family members including our out of town contact so they can check in either by cell phone or school land line. The bag 'o stuff fits easily into their school backpacks should they need to take it anywhere, and they also always have a change of clothing (gym strip) in their gym lockers plus whatever coat/jacket/outdoor layers they wore to school that day so we feel they are pretty prepared to go it alone for a while.

Hubs has a Workplace 72-hour kit in a zippered nylon bag containing similar items (slightly different food choices plus a hand-crank radio, work gloves and basic tools) in his desk drawer at work.

eta: I should perhaps note that the reason the kids have $20 in coins, is because we don't have bills in Canada for $1 or $2 amounts anymore, so they each have a change purse of "loonies" ($1 coins) and "toonies" ($2 coins). Oh, and a "toque" (say "tuke") is a knitted hat in Canuck

 

[Toulle]

When I was in elementary school, besides the usual fire drills we also had tornado drills (in the hall on your knees & elbows, hands over your head) and even nuke drills (duck and cover) as if they would do any good whatsoever.

It wasn't considered insane at all at the time. Why is prepping for some disaster considered a bit wierd now?