Disaster Planning

I finally got the hint. A few weeks ago I read that water and food in emergency kits should be replaced every 6 months. I wrote it on my to-do list. And there it stayed.

Last week I watched a few minutes of the 10 o’clock news and one of the features was on how kids often sleep through smoke alarms. I’ve had a lifelong semi-irrational fear of fire, so this especially scared me. The next morning I tried to drive to work but was unable to take my normal route because our neighbor’s home was on fire! Then two dates later we broke down on the freeway.

Okay, I get it. I get it.

I found some good disaster planning websites:
Family Readiness Kit by the American Academy of Pediatrics
Red Cross Diaster Information

We spent Saturday afternoon practicing and drilling the kids on the following list:
We practiced crawling out of the house. Meeting at a designated spot. We even taught my son how to open his bedroom window (!!!) and helped them climb out and run to our meeting place.

I’ve worked hard to teach my son our address and phone number (put to a little tune, maybe one day I’ll write about it). I am proud that my daughter can name all of our full names. Nothing irks me more than school-aged children that are still unable to tell you their parents names!

Today I worked on putting together the emergency bags. We keep one bag of emergency clothes, one bag of emergency food, and one box of car emergency materials (jumper cables, first aid, chains, etc) in each car. After I add a few more items I’ll be almost done. Then (and this part is important), I need to write this all down on the calendar for 6 months from now so that we have 2x/year practices. We practice 5+ times per year for different emergencies at school. Since we are home most of the time, shouldn’t we be at least as practiced there? You can’t ever be too prepared for an emergency!