http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/business/10prepare.ready.html
Pam Stegner knows a lot about preparing for an emergency. After all, Mrs. Stegner, a former emergency medical technician in Collins, Mo., has been stockpiling for years now.
To take care of her family of five during a catastrophe, she has a gravity-fed water purifier able to process 30 gallons of water a day, as well as 600 pounds of rice and beans, 18,000 dried eggs and 16 tons of organically grown hard winter wheat stored in a semi-tractor trailer and a temperature-controlled storehouse.
Mrs. Stegner is the first to admit that she may take preparedness to an extreme, but her reasons for doing it may not sound so odd after watching victims of Hurricane Katrina languish for days without aid. "You can't wait for the government to get there," she said. "You will die before they get there."
Indeed, the Federal Emergency Management Agency advises that Americans prepare a two-week supply cache because it could take that long for help to arrive. FEMA says on its Web site, "A two-week supply can relieve a great deal of inconvenience and uncertainty until services are restored."
Getting ready for the next disaster doesn't seem so crazy anymore. Mrs. Stegner, who is the host of a radio show on preparedness and sells survival products from a store in nearby Humansville, says it has been easy to "get labeled a nutcase" for worrying about catastrophes. But she and other survivalist outfitters are noticing how, at least right now, the general public is a bit more receptive.
John Maniatty, who runs the FrugalSquirrels.com Web site out of Morrisville, Vt., says he is getting six times the traffic he had in early August and considerably more than after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "So many more normal people - I use that term because I get wackos, too - are taking a look," he said.
You don't have to go as far as a survivalist, but you can certainly learn from them. Here is a distillation of advice from emergency preparedness experts from across the spectrum:
WATER. If you take nothing else away from this article, at least heed this advice: stock up on water. It is cheap, it has a long shelf-life, and, most important, you cannot live without it. Most of us can do without food - not to mention e-mail and "Desperate Housewives" - for several weeks.
But dehydration is a very real and life-threatening danger after a calamity. Though you drink half a gallon of water a day, you should store one gallon of water per person per day. Assume you will be cut off for at least three days and store as much extra as you have room for in a cool, dark space. The International Bottled Water Association says jugs of water can be kept indefinitely, though they may pick up an off-flavor from the plastic after a year or so. But it is pretty easy to rotate the stock every couple of months since many people drink bottled water.
If you have the room, store some of the water in the freezer. When the electricity goes, you'll have more ice to preserve the food in the refrigerator for a day or two longer.
If worse comes to worse and you run out of water while your community's water supply is contaminated, turn off the water supply to your house and drain water from your water heater or scoop it from the toilet tank. It must be purified by boiling it for several minutes or by mixing in two drops of old-fashioned bleach - not the "mountain fresh" scented varieties - to each quart of water.
FOOD. The odds of anything calamitous happening are slim, so you don't want to spend several thousand dollars buying and storing food. You have better things to do with your money than investing in creamed corn and sardines. If you have a pantry or basement with a decent supply of canned foods and bottled juices, you should do just fine for several weeks. "You could survive for two weeks just on Tang," said Eric Zaltas, nutritionist with PowerBar Inc., a maker of nutrition bars.
Given that in most emergencies - floods, earthquake or fire - you may have to flee, it is smart to keep a 72-hour bug-out kit. That's a three-day supply that you can easily carry out to the car at a moment's notice. The crucial concept here is high nutrition in a small amount of space. Freeze-dried foods would be perfect, except you'll need clean and heated water to reconstitute those products.
Some people buy the military's Meals Ready to Eat. A case of 12 meals costs about $73 and they are currently in short supply. Nutrition bars are another good choice. The rap against them - loads of fat, carbohydrates and calories - is actually a plus during a disaster. Something like the PowerBar Performance Bar also contains electrolytes, which when taken with water, will help keep your body chemistry in order. Avoid the chocolate-coated varieties because they will just get messy when it gets hot and water for cleanup is at a premium.
High-protein diet shakes are a bit expensive, but have the added advantage of supplying you with liquid, as would high-fiber potassium-packed vegetable juice. Throw in some dried fruit and you have enough calories to get by for three days.
Don't forget ready-to-feed baby formula if you have an infant. People with medical conditions like diabetes or kidney disease will have to pay more attention to what they store and what they eat. As for pets, buy the dried pet food your pets don't really like and they won't eat as much.
For the truly serious food hoarder, FrugalSquirrels.com, the survivalist outfitter, sells an $18 software package called Food Storage Planner that will compute exactly how much you need and alert you when to replace it.
CASH. If you get a warning, head to the nearest cash machine ASAP. (You'll already have all the food and water you need, right?) The time to raid the A.T.M. is before the disaster because when the electricity fails, you won't find one that works. Take out as much as you can because you may need it to buy supplies at post-disaster inflated prices and credit cards won't work if there is no electricity or computer networks are down. When the disaster has passed put the money back in the bank.
COMMUNICATIONS. In almost every disaster, cellphones have proved remarkably useless. (Old-fashioned landline phones hold up much better.) Without electricity, desktop computers become expensive paperweights and laptops follow in short order as their batteries drain. Short of a $1,000 satellite phone, there is precious little you can do to reach out to the world in an emergency. Face it. When a disaster strikes, you can't think like Steven P. Jobs. Abraham Lincoln must be your role model because when the electricity goes, all you have at your disposal are the things people of the 19th century got by on.
Two things that might help: get an e-mail account from Google or Yahoo that allows you access to e-mail from any computer you happen to find and buy a hand-crank cellphone charger.
EXTRAS. You cannot do without a first-aid kit, a radio and lots of batteries. The new flashlights that use light-emitting diodes will help you conserve juice. Camping gear - butane stoves, coolers and lightweight tents - easily doubles as survival gear. What else? An adapter that turns your car's cigarette lighter into an electrical outlet for any appliance could be a lifesaver. Consider sticking a can of fluorescent spray paint among your other supplies and then stash all this stuff in a plastic box that can serve to float things out to safety.
MEDICINES. Thanks to health insurance companies' rules, it is often not easy to get extra medicine without paying full price. But with a little planning it can be done. Ask your doctor for help. Or for several months in a row, start refilling prescriptions a week or so before they run out until you have accumulated several weeks' supply.
DOCUMENTS. Pulling together documents you need on the run may be the hardest thing to do. Financial planners have been after people for years to make a "beneficiary book" to help their heirs or executors more easily sort through affairs. It should hold copies of birth and marriage certificates, adoption papers, key identification numbers, copies of bank statements, deeds, titles, credit cards and insurance policies as well as passwords to online accounts. The same information would be useful to you in case you lose access to your primary records in a disaster. Just keep it in a secure place and grab it on the way out of the house.
GUNS. Some survivalists recommend a gun for protection. But if you haven't used one regularly, don't know how to store it safely and haven't made the moral decision that you could kill a person, forget it. Someone is just going to get hurt and it will probably be you. Your best protection is banding together with neighbors - and sharing that food all of you stashed.
Always good to have spare tires and gasoline for a designated emergency vehicle.
My only real beef with the article was the last paragraph on guns. I know you all are probably firmly opposed to firearms but when you are advising people on surviving crisis situations such as Katrina, it is immoral to be so negligent and dishonest.
"Some survivalists recommend a gun for protection." I have never met or have heard of a survivalist who wouldn't strongly recommend firearms included in a survival kit. Most or a majority might be a better replacement for some. Anybody discussing survivalist kits who discouraged firearms would be laughed out of the discussion.
"But if you haven't used one regularly, don't know how to store it safely and haven't made the moral decision that you could kill a person, forget it. Someone is just going to get hurt and it will probably be you."
Wow, how about reminding the reader that one of the hallmarks of a crisis situation is that the Government's ability to defend the people is at least for a period of time significantly deteriorated or outright non-existent. Then saying if you're serious about having an effective survival kit, each responsible adult should possess a handgun no smaller than a .38 Special Revolver or 9 mm pistol and each household should have at least one defensive rifle an ideal one being an AR-15. That there should be at least dozens of rounds stored for each weapon, that the owners should get training on safety and usage and regularly practice with them (Which is an enjoyable past time).
"Your best protection is banding together with neighbors - and sharing that food all of you stashed."
Not really, being in a herd of sheep is only marginally safer then being one sheep. When the wolves come around it doesn't matter how many sheep there are, the wolves will have their way probably by taking all of that stored food and other survival equipment that they can carry. And one would hope that would be the only things they would take, if they wanted to be really mean they might injure, kill or rape some or all of the sheep. But hey, its' too much to ask that someone be willing to protect themselves or others with a firearm, or get over their phobia by learning about and keeping firearms.
The 3rd most important survival equipment came last on your list, received the shortest blurb, was the vaguest and most unexplained with out any specifics and was really downright discouraged. I ask that as a service to some of the more uninformed and/or impressionable of your readers, you revise your advise on guns in survival kits. This is about lives and practicality, not the politics, unwritten agendas and policies of the NYT. Lives come first and like it or not, firearms are very important to surviving crisis situations and should be expounded upon much more fully and competently.
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I read this article with much interest and think that most of the advice offered is spot on; however, you laid an egg in the last paragraph. Having a firearm (and ammo) is a fundamental part of any disaster plan. Indeed, this has been demonstrated quite effectively during the total breakdown of civil authority in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Many armed citizens protected themselves, property and their neighbors when police were unable or unwilling to keep thugs from preying upon them. Having a firearm and training in its use prove to be invaluable tools when chaos and criminals reign.
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I thought your recent article on "How to prepare for the Worst" was very good but omitted information that is routinely left out in such articles--about how to select and use an electrical generator. Here in Mississippi, even without such monstrous storms as Katrina, the rural power grid can be unstable, making a generator handy several times per year. I think you would do your vast readership an excellent service by dedicating an article specifically to owning and operating small generators for the home. There are some simple strategies that a homeowner can use to leverage the effectiveness of these devices--such as running the refrigerator/freezer for only a few hours every day, while powering a small emergency air conditioner in one room of the house for comfort at other times such as at night for sleeping. In this way 5 gallons of gasoline can last several days.
In addition, though you mentioned them briefly, power inverters that create 115V power from a car or truck's DC system are very effective and almost unknown to the population at large, yet they are much cheaper than most generators and easier to use, especially for electronics like cellphones or laptops, or basic lighting. Please consider such an important article in Katrina's wake and around the anniversary of September 11th. Thanks for the excellent reporting Tim Kelly
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That was an excellent and informative article about preparedness! Bravo!
I wanted to let you know of an additional resource that you may not have heard about. The LDS (or Mormon) Church has been counseling its members for over 50 years now to set aside food and water in case of an emergency. The counsel focuses on a progressive system of preparation: 72-hour kits, a month's supply of food, and a year's supply of food. The LDS church has established an extremely effective system of food storage, and has canning facilities throughout the country where members can bring in their own food or purchase food on-site to can or seal in mylar bags. I am not sure if the canning facilities are available to the general public--one would have to contact local church leaders to find out. There is also a great website established by the church dedicated to all areas of preparedness, http://www.providentliving.org, with fantastic ideas and resources everyone could use.
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As for communications, you might suggest people get inexpensive Family Radio Service Radios that can be had for $10-20 each. It will allow family members to stay in touch within a range of a couple of miles, perhaps while one family member surveys the situation and the others remain in shelter. For those with a little more technical inclination, an Amateur Radio license to operate on VHF frequencies can be got by answering a 37 question test on basic amateur operation. Many can get one after just a week's study. That will allow the use of amateur repeaters, many of which have a range of up to 50 miles, potentially far out of the disaster area.
More advanced amateur licenses allow the use of high frequencies (shortwave) which can reach thousands of miles away.. The Salvation Army operates the SATERN radio network on high frequencies which at first passed emergency messages about such matters as fuel supply at the New Orleans airport and is now passing messages about the fate of loved ones in the area.
+ Establish a meeting place in case of emergency other than at home.
+ And think about clothing. Something that dries quickly and can keep you warm.
---Hi, I'm reading your disaster article--very interesting. Instead of storing batteries (ok, be paranoid--"in addition to" storing batteries), I suggest
+ Obtaining a solar/hand-crank radio with flashlight.
GOTO www.ccrane.com; the radio itself has an unflashy name:
Rechargeable Dynamo & Solar Radio with Light.
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* Have auto's gas tanks should always be kept more than half full.
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If you do a follow up, I saw recently that Hammacher Schlemmer has a backpack with solar panels so you can stock up electricity and use it to power your computer, cell phone, whatever. I think it cost around $ 70 or maybe more, but seems to me something worth buying.
I couldn't help wondering how all those infants and toddlers survived without their Pampers. Maybe that's something people should stock up on, too...
Since I have to travel often for work I always have my Lands End roller suitcase (or whatever you call them) always packed with all the toiletries and medicines I use, plus makeup, pashmina (good as a blanket if necessary), light short nylon raincoat, folding umbrella (sturdy, from Lands End), cotton scarf, rollup rain hat, rollup straw hat, extra underwear, cotton knit nightgown, terry slippers from a hotel, black cotton knit pants and t-shirt tunic from LE, pair of moccasins, cotton knit long cardigan and mid-thigh length silk and cashmere black cardigan, disposable latex gloves, swiss knife, mini flashlight, and can opener. Also a nylon tote bag.
When I return from my trip I check my bag and replace anything I need to so it's always ready to go. Obviously when I leave I add anything else necessary for that particular trip such as evening clothes, wool sweaters, whatever. But it saves me a lot of time because I already have the basics and don't have to worry I might have forgotten my tweezers or hairbrush.
Obviously this would be very helpful in an emergency. I also photocopied my credit cards, passport, press credentials, birth certificate along with various passwords for my computer (bank, NYTimes web and other internet sites) and include that sheet of paper in my suitcase.
---While I found your advice helpful in preparing for a disaster, your statement "buy the dried pet food your pets don't really like and they won't eat as much" was misleading.
Most veterinarians recommend gradually introducing a new food into a pet's diet; a sudden change can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting, conditions that can be exacerbated by the stress of a disaster. A better solution would be to buy exactly the same brand food in dried form and reduce the portions slightly if you cannot store large quantities. Would you recommend to parents that they buy food their children don't really like so the kids wont eat as much?
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In the article "Some Ways to Prepare for the Absolute Worst ", you suggested:
> Two things that might help: get an e-mail account from Google or Yahoo that allows > you access to e-mail from any computer you happen to find and buy a hand-crank > cellphone charger.
For the former, many systems have a "webmail" system that allows you to access email from any computer. I know that AOL and Earthlink do, so you don't need an additional GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo account. For others, you can try services like mail2web.com, which allows access to any non-firewalled account. Some employers offer web access if the employee knows the special website and all their passcodes. Personal experience speaking on all accounts.
Hand-crank cellphone chargers may be available at camping stores; that's how I got mine. A quick check shows that Hammacher-Schlemmer also carries them, and SOSCharger.net has its own brand. A hand-crank radio may be beneficial as well.
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