Fire Season

Fire season has started. With the start of the season it is time for those of us not already affected by one of the first fires to crank up our planning to respond to what nature has in store for us this year. Forest fires can affect all of us, even if we live in the “city” fires we would think of as “forest fires” can quickly find their way into the city and the fire does not care where you live or how far away from the wilderness you live.

First thing we have to do, buy insurance!!! Home owner’s and renter’s policies can be bought to cover your house if the fire decides your house needs to burn. This helps with after the fire for the most part yet can also give you comfort during the fire. Having insurance lets you think “Well at least we got insurance!” Being able to say this pushes the grief and worry back a bit and allows you to function better.

Having to evacuate from a fire or finding you cannot return home from a fire is not the time to think about the prior planning you “should” have done. Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance! We all need to take a few minutes and check over or begin planning for having to evacuating from a fire. Of course leaving the house for any reason is hard to do and in this case can be one of the shortest warnings you might receive. Following some of the plans we have covered in other post let’s check and see what we can have Pre-Planned to help us if we suddenly need to evacuate.

No matter if the fire is minutes or hours away one of the first things we check is our Every Day Carry. If we have our wallet, phone and other items on us or positioned for easy pick up in the middle of the night we are even with the game so far. We can run, literally run from the house in our pajamas if we had to! With our EDC we should be able to buy some clothes, food and shelter. Of course some of us might want to rethink what we wear to bed in case we suddenly end up in the street for all to see!!!!!

If you keep your Bail Out Bag in the car or by the door having one means you have more with you when the time to run comes. Hopefully the bag includes a jacket, more money, phone charger and other items which can help you in the immediate aftermath of the running!! Once in the car or on the way out the house hopefully you picked up or have your get home bag! This will also give you additional items, food, clothes and other items to help you. All of these items and the prior planning which goes with them could be a God send if you have to run. Especially if you have little ones you have to care for. Having already planned to evacuate if you need to will also help with our furry friends. Having carriers on hand to pack them into or plans for moving larger animals already worked out will make ensuring they are safe much easier.

When to go? As soon as someone tells you it is time to go! If the police come through your neighborhood or the reverse 911 systems tells you to go! GO! DO NOT WAIT, GO! At the end of the day whatever it is you could jam into the car or put in to a bag is not worth your life!!!! Fire does not care who you are, it will burn you and move on, never thinking of the hurt your death will bring to others. You must remember this; you dying will affect others for the rest of their lives!!! The loss of photos, toys or electronics can be dealt with mush easier…………… If the fire is getting close, leave. Just leave! You do not get extra “tough guy/girl” points awarded for staying until you can feel the fire on your face. What you do get is to use up some of your luck and some of us are not lucky to begin with!!!

Do not be the idiot on the news trying to hold back a wild fire with a garden hose! Your dumbass just becomes something the fire fighters have to deal with when they could be focusing on the firefighting!! Because when the fire gets close enough your little hose can reach the fire your little hose is no match for the fire!!

Being able to secure your home, because you have taken steps to increase the security of your home, should give you more piece of mind knowing no one can just break in if you leave. Having cleared away brush to give the fire fighters room to work should give you another piece of mind to add in. Not having to plan while in the middle of something should also help.

Now if we have the time we need to prioritize what we take. Start with paperwork, insurance paperwork, mortgage or rental agreements, passports, shot records and all the other paperwork which will help you after the fire. All of these things need to be in one spot, preferable in one container. Cheap, locking, fire resistant boxes can be picked up at Target or hardware stores for cheap. These boxes easily give you somewhere to keep all this stuff and allow you to just throw the box in the car and go.

Medications or other special need items should be the next priority. Making your way to safe area is good, getting there and needing the heart medicine you left in the house is bad. Clothes for at least three days might be next. This way you can have a set on, one in the wash and one set for the next day. Fill a cooler with food for a picnic, the kid’s favorite food or other items you do not need to cook. Maybe you just need to pull back to a nearby park for a few hours? Having something to eat could make watching the fire go by your house make easier to deal with! After all these things, then think about heirlooms or the big TV. Just remember you can live without the PlayStation or the picture Grandma painted in 1918!!!

From experience I can attest having to pack to run from a fire is not fun! Having plans in place really does help. The last fire we had to pack up for was chaos for a few minutes followed by hanging out watching to see if the fire was going to come close enough to run. Personally seeing, implementing and having the little piece of mind from prior planning were great not just for me but also the wife and kids. Which is the point of taking the time to plan ahead……………..

As Always,

Stay Safe!!!

Priority - WATER

Water is an item you have to put a priority on when planning for emergencies due to water being one of the first issues you have to deal with. Maybe you were in a car wreck and are now stuck on the side of the road, maybe you found shelter from a tornado or maybe the city has put out a warning about not using the tap water because it has become contaminated? You will be surprised how thirsty you get after the adrenaline goes away from the car wreck and hopefully you do not have any thirsty little ones with you while you wait for a tow!! Surviving a tornado only to find your home and neighborhood destroyed would be bad enough! Having family and friends needing water would with now way of getting any would make a bad situation far worst!

Depending on how hydrated you are when the emergency starts, amount of moving around you are doing and a host of other factors determine how soon water will move up the priority scale. For just about any situation a day to three days is about how long you can go before water becomes the top priority in your life. Literally, your body will stop working without water. We need to have the ability to find, clean and store water to put off any issues until the situation goes back to “normal”.

You have to remember one drop of unclean water can give you a host of water borne illnesses. The simplest one to think of is diarrhea, something anyone who has traveled to Mexico has worried about. Other bugs you can pick up from water are real bugs, little creepy crawlers living in your gut and tearing you up!! Think of this, you have survived the immediate danger of an emergency only to become a casualty to the event from drinking bad water. Now think about your whole family getting sick because you do not know how to clean water!!!! You can put all the water you want into one end but if it coming out the other just as fast you are doing yourself no good!

Easiest answer to the need for water during most emergencies is bottled water. Wait, did you find that bottle floating in the flood water? Did you clean off the bottle before you put it to your lips? Did you forget because you were glad to find “safe water” and now you put flood water into your system without realizing it? Remember untreated water for anywhere, even the outside of container, can make you sick! Safely stored bottled water can help greatly during an emergency. Even a few bottles of warm water in the car can help if you are stranded and need to make a bottle or give a youngster a drink.

A good idea is to invest in a portable filtration system. LIFE STRAW is a good brand and the simplest to use. You have to remember this filter does not kill viruses and you have to be careful what source of water you choose to use.

There are a lot of hiking filters on the market and having one around the house is a good idea. There are even filter systems built to the needs of families. Do a little research and plan to spend a little bit of money on a system. You will be glad you did if you ever need it!!!

If you need to take water from a questionable source do everything you can to filter the water properly! Start at the collection point. Do not take stagnate, bug growing and debris filled water if you do not have to! Do not collect water from a source animal or humans have been standing in. If you can find a free flowing source or tap into a source, say a water heater, which has a better chance of being clean to start with. Either way using a coffee filters or even a bandanna to cover the container you are filling will stop large pieces of stuff from getting into the water.

If we are boiling the water do not just boil the water for ten minutes. Bring the water to a rolling boiling for several minutes. Have one spot for treated water and one area for untreated and never mix the two!!! When you’re done boiling the water take two containers and transfer the water back and forth. You can even take an empty water bottle, fill it half way with water and shake the water back and forth. This puts air back into the water and makes it taste better.

Speaking of taste, having something to add to the water is a really good idea. Adding something as simple as Kool Aid to the water will get kids to drink more and you can even find other things to add flavor and vitamins to the water. Lemon aid and sports drink mixes are a few other items you can have on hand to add.

Having clean water on hand can be a big task when you’re in an emergency situation. You will want water first for drinking but remember you will also need water for hygiene and cooking. Even the water you use to clean off a cooking space needs to be clean water and having enough water on hand can be a big project. With some prior planning you can have items on hand to speed up this process and assist you with meeting your family’s needs. Anything we can do to make the situation easier adds to our ability to take care of other issues and brings down the stress level.

As Always,

Stay Safe!!!

Suburban garden - mine

Skills and abilities are something you take with you everywhere; no tools are needed to retain knowledge and learning a new skill is fun. This is where my little garden comes into play. My particular skill set, “Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.” extra points if you know what movie the quote is from, does not make me a farmer or even a gardener. Which is one of the reasons I have tried my hand at gardening or as the joke goes around here ‘working the farm’!

I have to admit it is not easy to grow things but is exciting when you see things grow and really exciting when you dig in the ground and find food you have grown!!! If you have never tended a garden or even tried to grow something in the windowsill I would strongly suggest you give it a try!!!
For some of us there is very limited room, we live in the city, in an apartment or our cookie cutter houses seem to close together. Almost all of us can find a window or strip of dirt we can transform into our own private farm!!! Start with just some herbs in the windowsill and work your way up from there. Using whatever space you can find.

I started in the windowsill with herbs, moved on to pots along the side of the house and now have my ‘farm’ along a strip of dirt which had an ornamental bush taking up space. For me starting small got me in the habit of watering something. Trust me the death toll was high when I first tried to grow anything!!! I’ve been trying to turn all of the plants in the backyard into food producers while not interfering with the back yard still being a backyard. Meaning I have not dug up the whole yard and put in rows of crops, the yard still functions as a place the kids can play and we can hang out in.

"The Farm"

As in learning any skill I spent a lot of time researching how to grow things and really just learning what I did wrong the last time. I also had to learn to can what I was growing but that is a post for another day! This week I decided to harvest my bounty off the farm!! Some of the plants were wilting and the bugs had found them. I also couldn’t wait any more to see how I had done!!! Drum roll……..

We managed to grow about five pounds of potatoes, some onions (still not sure how to grow them), a bunch of sage for cooking and even some blackberries!!!

We still have to see how the peppers are going to do and the strawberry plant I thought was dead was just hiding under the potato leaves!!! Tomato plant is growing, the grape vine has several bundles of grapes, we have to wait to see what the apricot tree and apple tree are going to do this year. I'm reading up on how to start another grape vine from scratch, trying to figure out what else to plant and today I will be drying some of the booty from the farm for storage!!! I also have to rework the rain collection system. I put it together in a hurry awhile back and have been using the water to water the plants, we are still in a drought here in California.

As you can probably figure out I have fun learning how to grow food, store food and it is exciting to get out my 'element' to learn new skills!!! If you have skill in the garden step out your comfort zone and learn something new, if you have no skill in the garden step out of your comfort zone and try your hand at something new! As an added bonus get the kids involved as much as they are able to. Nothing beats the look in a child's eye when they dig in the dirt and find a potato!!!

As Always,

Stay Safe!!!

Every Day Carry - real story

Why do we plan for emergencies? Why bother? Nothing will happen and if something does happen the government will be there to help. Guess your definition of an emergency is different than mine. Real life story time...........

The other day I received a text message from the Boss, my prettier half, asking if the power was still on at the house. After exchanging a few text I learned the power had gone out in the area her and one of our children were at. They had stopped to have dinner and the power suddenly went out. Now is this an emergency? If you have ever been with a child when the power goes out you will understand this is a bonafide emergency!!!

With the power out and fire alarms going off, the better half had to console the little one and figure out how to pay for the food they had already received. From her purse came a flashlight, you know the one I annoyed her into carrying!! Along with some money, cash, to pay their bill.

The flashlight might seem obvious while the money might not. With the power out the waitress told the Boss they had no way of giving her a bill, using credit cards or giving her change if she used cash!!! She had them estimate the bill, paid extra and left with the little one, who was shaken up by the situation. How long would they have had to stay had she not had cash and the ability to pay the bill?

Only a small area around the restaurant was affected by the emergency. Yet you would have thought the end of the world had came when the little one told me the story!! Being able to produce light and cash saved the day to the little one and put mommy on super hero status for a moment or two!!! Moral of the story...... annoy your better half till they start carrying some EDC gear, they will thank you if they ever need it!!!

As Always,

Stay Safe

Medication

None of us are getting any younger, some of us have special needs and some of us rely on medications to keep us around. If you need medication on a daily or even a once in a while basis this is something you have to take into account when planning for emergencies. Be it an inhaler you use only once in a while or heart medication you need to take every day. Why? Because the day you are running low on medication or forgot to get a new inhaler is the day something will happen!!! (Murphy’s Law)

Some medication is easier to store then others and in rare cases you might not be able to store it at all. First thing we need to discuss is, do you really need it? What would REALLY happen if you did not have it? We all know people who take something or have some medical condition which really…… let’s just say they aren’t going to die if the condition is not addressed.

Ask your doctor if you can get extra. Tell the doctor what it is for “Doc, I am afraid if an earthquake (tornado, hurricane, insert disaster) comes I will be without my medication! What can I do?” Be honest with them, let them know you value their thoughts and honestly ask them to assist you in doing something to alleviate your concern. They can write you a prescription to have some extra medication. Heck this might even lead into a good discussion about planning for emergencies and having a doctor as a friend is almost always a good thing!!!!

Whatever you do, DO NOT cut your pills in half or some other scheme you think you will be able to pull. If you skip taking your pills or lower the dosage or whatever half brained idea you come up with, this will just cause you issues. Why? Because the doctor said to take a certain amount and now you haven’t. This means the day something bad happens will be the day you are weakened by not taking your pills and this puts you at a deficit right from the start of the emergency. Just ask your doctor.

While talking about medication and emergencies we also have to address the elephant in the room. Some of us cannot live without modern medicine. I hate to bring this up but some of us will die if we cannot stay connected to modern medicine. Of course we will try to go to any lengths to reach modern medicine but there could be situations where we cannot, people will die. If you are one of these people who are alive only because of modern medicine you have a duty to your family to try and learn what was done for people with your condition before electricity. In a lot of cases people lived long and happy lives before what we would call ‘modern medicine’. If there are treatments for your issue learn them now! Ask your doctor what used to be done. You have an obligation to your family and loved ones to learn now what could keep you alive later.

Ask your doctor, see if the can help you. Have some extra medicine on hand. Say a weeks’ worth or even a months’ worth. Just enough in case the "big one" does hit or your home suddenly becomes an island. Remember in emergency situations you are responsible for you………..

As Always,
Stay Safe!!!

THE WATER IS RISING!!

Recent events in Texas and the news coverage got me to thinking about this post. I watched several rescues of people from cars trapped in flooded streets, homes surrounded by water and some folks who decided to “play” near running water.

This event really drove home for me how important prior planning is. People found themselves having to leave their homes, with nothing. Others were stranded on the road when the waters blocked the roads or their cars stalled in the water. They had to abandon their vehicles, with nothing.

With the minimal of planning the odds are they would not have found themselves in these positions. How? Nothing is worth your life, not your job, not your car, not that event you need to be at and most defiantly not “playing” around running water.

Even ankle high water is enough to sweep a grown person off their feet. The dip you drive over every day can fill up with enough water to stall your car. Mother Nature will win every time if you challenge her! Period, full stop!

Having food, water and extra cash at home can keep you from having to venture out during a flood. Having a get home bag can help you if you are stranded somewhere. Having a bail out bag can help you if you’re in a situation where you suddenly have to abandon your car. Being able to miss a day or two of work because you have something set aside might ensure you are around to go back to work after the storm has passed.

Do not drive through streams in your car. Your car is not designed to go through water. The force of the water can easily push you off the road and you will quickly find yourself stranded. Do not try to walk across streets which have turned into rivers. Especially in urban areas, water takes the path of least resistance and in urban areas this means the roads. Do not drink or spend time in flood waters. Sewage treatment plants get flooded and odds are the water all around you is contaminated!!! Even a simple scratch can become infected by the CRAP, chemicals and other nastiness floating in the water.

DO NOT DRINK UNTREATED FLOOD WATERS! You will become ill, you can become ill even if you just fall down in the water and swallow some. Then you are trapped by or dealing with flood waters and sicker then you have ever been in your life!!!!
Know the threat of flood in your area. The information for most areas can be found of the internet. Heck if you go outside and look at the land around you, you can figure out where the water is going to go; if your home is at the bottom of the terrain guess where the water is going to end up.

Plan ahead, watch or listen to the local news and be ready to leave before it is too late. During an emergency is the wrong time to plan, under stress you will make mistakes and please USE SOME COMMON SENSE!!!!

As Always,

Stay Safe!!!