72 Hour Kits

This is a follow up to my last post and yet a completely different aspect of emergency preparedness.  I want you to envision the following scenario.  It is late at night and you are in bed sleeping, you then hear noises and sirens in the distance.  Next you receive an urgent knock on the door.  You grab a baseball bat and open the door slowly to peer around it.  It is a police officer and some neighbors, they look grim and rather official.  They tell you that such and such a thing has occurred and they need you to leave your home.  You have five minutes to gather everything up and flee.  What is going through your head at this point.  Probably everything and as you gather your family together your head feels broken because you don't know what you need to flee, you don't know how long you will be out of your house and you don't know where to go.

This is where your 72 hour kit comes in.  First you know that you have a 72 hour kit one for each member of the family including any pets you might take with you.  You can then move on to more important considerations like dressing for the climate putting good shoes on, getting important documents, prescriptions and sentimental items. Because of your preparedness you are ready to go.  You grab your 72 hour kits and walk out the door confident that you will be able to survive the next few days until help arrives or until you can get back into your house.

Now some people talk about bug out bags, but this is different it assumes that eventually things will return to normal one way or another.  Maybe your house will be gone, but you will find another one to live in.  Think about all those people in Japan who not only suffered earthquakes and tsunamis but evacuation due to radiation leaks from nuclear power plants.  This kit could mean a million different things between living comfortable until the authorities show up and help out or starvation and near death.  I am not going to talk about what exactly needs to go into a 72 hour kit.  There is information all over the web that can help with that.  Their are usually local classes on these as well.  You can also buy pre-formed kits as well.  One blogger writes posts on how to have kits for children specifically.  Her blog is Chronicles of a Babywise Mom  she has great advice on how to organize your kits especially for the littlest members of the family.  I feel so guilty when I think how I did not plan for anything when A was small and have just now realized how vitally important it is to make him a part of our 72 hour kit.  And just when you think you got it all everything changes.

My advice to you is to start a 72 hour kit.  You can buy them or make them.  Ours are in the coat closet next to the front door, this is so we can say we are ready and grab them and walk out of our house when that knock comes at our door. This is all of the information I could give on this subject but I hope this will be a starting point to use when you talk with your family to get them on the same page.