You have two choices. Deal with the situation where you are at or move to a position which gives you an advantage. Major storm coming your way? You either ride it out or move away from it. Flat tire on the road? You either stay and deal with it or move to a better position. Gunman shooting at you? You either deal with it where you are or move to a better position. Power out at the house? You either stay or go to somewhere with power. We make these decisions all the time with little thought. We know what we need to do for a given situation.
Planning for emergencies is no different. Somehow if you read the multitude of postings on the internet or look through all the books on Amazon there seems to be two completely different strategies and you seemed to have to choose one or the other. Why? The train of thought from these sources and others seems to be the situations you are preparing for are all going to be such you have to pick one option or the other. Of course there could be situations when you can clearly see one of the options is the best and you go for the best option. What if the option you HAVE to take is not the option you planned for?
You are cooking, your phone rings, you are distracted and the pan has a grease fire growing in it the next time you look back at it. Choosing the "Go" option of planning you never used an of your resources to put any "Stay" options in the home. No thought or money was put into a fire extinguisher but money was put into the biggest pack you could find....... You are driving late at night, your tired, your phone rings, you are distracted and do not notice the road turns and the next thing you know you went off the road, flipped your car. Of course your phone is lost, you have high heels on, storms had been reported coming and you can see the nearest town has to be five miles away. You always figured you would just "Stay" if something happened. You have the best hydroponic set up in your greenhouse but never put together a bag for the car. (side note: unless your in certain states you should only use hydroponics to grow vegetables! just seeing who is paying attention)
When we start this adventure in planning for emergencies we need to focus on giving ourselves options. Now you might need to focus on something right off the top. Is your top concern having to walk home at some point? Do you need to install a shelter for tornados? We all have different "first things" we want to address. If you're first thing is a doomsday compound, complete with a Mad Max caravan prepositioned, you might want to scale this down a bit. What we do not want to do is prescribe to only one way of responding to situations.
After you prepare for the first thing then move to cover as many things as you can. Always trying to give you and your family as many options as possible. The pails you bought to store food in your garage. Are they to heavy for other members of your family or you to move if the plan changed from staying home to getting out of dodge? Here is a good example of the idea we are talking about.
You purchased several prepackaged five gallon pails stuffed full of emergency food. You have focused on 'staying' if faced with a situation. Weather services has reported the biggest storm in history is going to rip right through your neighborhood. Authorities have ordered the evacuation of the area. Do you just leave all the food there? Do you travel without any food, having to rely on the charity of others? Do you arrive at a friend or family members home empty handed and expect them to meet all your needs? Maybe you did stay? Now your home is unlivable and you can not stay there. You and your family try to take the food buckets with you but quickly find out they are heavy and not really made to be carried long distances.
Making a purchase like these food buckets can be a good idea. (see other postings on buying this kind of stuff) You have food on hand if you need it and you can transport the food easily in a vehicle. You might have to repackage some of the food if you or noone else in your family can lift them. You might be a professional body builder and can easily move the buckets around, can your ninety pound, super model wife? How about your children who are members of MENSA and aspiring actors? This is where we keep saying we have to tailor our plans to our situation and there are no one size fits all answers to planning.
Do you have a backpack you can dump those buckets into to make the food more portable? (no stuffing the buckets into a pack is not a good idea. to much unused space in the bag if you do) If you are going to put you, your supermodel husband, two-point-three kids and the dogs into the Mini Cooper do you have some way of strapping the buckets on to the roof?
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| typical husband of readers of this blog! |
Simultaneous planning for both options is feasible. We just have to put a little forethought into what we are doing. When you store the food in the house for 'stay' do you use containers to hold the food which could be moved to the truck if the plan changed to 'go'? Those extra cans of food you pick up on sale and stash away for an emergency, when kept in a plastic bin are now ready for both situations. A cheap surplus army bag (seabag) you use to keep extra blankets in can quickly be repurposed to hold all those MREs you have stashed in the garage. Makes it a lot easier to carry them because those boxes they come in are not made to be carried very far. They're great for throwing in the car but really suck if you have hand carry them!
Be realistic when you are planning. I had a conversation with a fella the other day about buying these prepackaged buckets. As we talked he told me his plan if he and the wife had to leave was to carry a couple of these buckets and a backpack a piece. He figured if they had to "hoof it" this system would work. Knowing the situation a little, I tried to gently point out he was not physically ready to carry the amount of weight he thought he could in the way he was planning. I also know from previous conversations his wife is supposed to be in no physical condition, due to medical issues, to carry just about anything. He just figured purchasing some prepackaged, dehydrated buckets of food, and a couple of backpacks would cover his needs. If the Big One came and the two of them had to walk away from their home he figured they were set.
This is a great example of the one size fits all planning I see people do! He looked for what was to him the easiest answer. Of course some company had a product they claimed would fit his needs and he was ready to go with what they offered. Planning for an emergency done, now he could watch the Lakers game. Short version of the conversation and focusing on this post.
We discussed how far he thought in a worst case scenario they would have to walk. We discussed and went through the contents of the bags and buckets he wanted to buy. We agreed purchasing the stuff was a good starting point and from there the items could be modified. The best part to me was when I think I was able to have him understand the need to purchase a basket, wagon or some other means to haul what he had bought. Without having to just come right out and say "Dude, when was the last time you walked that far carrying that much? Your mind might say you can do it but trust me you are no where in the shape you think you are!" I am starting to digress from the point here.
Why pick one option when you do not have to? A little prior planning can give you multiple options when emergencies arise. We should try to build our planning on a firm base of multiple options and having the ability to be flexible in our response to situations. We may not be able to plan for everything, we can plan to give ourselves the ability to respond to anything!!
As Always,
Stay Safe
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