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!

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6 Comments

  1. I was hesitant to teach my ds (5) to open his window b/c I feared he might do it for “fun” sometime or open it w/out me knowing and then some murderous pschopath would enter!

    But I figured it was pretty unlikely that that would happen ๐Ÿ™‚ so I showed him how. Probably be good to do a reminder w/him since that was about 6 or more months ago.

  2. I’ll take this as a sign… we haven’t done a fire drill in the new house… thanks for the reminder!

  3. This is really great advice. My kid’s room are upstairs and I’ve been thinking about one of those safety ladders. I’m going to price them today!

  4. Really good advice and something I’ve had on my 101/1001 list since the beginning. This may be the push I need to get it done now. ๐Ÿ™‚

  5. Anonymous says:

    Don’t forget to make copies of your important papers for your bag. I went to the sporting goods store and bought a waterproof/plastic pouch to put them in. (Like you would use for canoeing) Anyway, copies of – birth certs, marriange license, passports, COC’s, list of emergency numbers (including hospitals, pastors, vet, poison control) are all in our bag.

  6. Wow! This is great that you are working on this with your kids! Congrats on taking the time to work on something that is really important!

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