Pearls&Grit

Here is the last and final emergency preparedness post (for now, that is) all stemming in large part from my trips to Houston aiding in the hurricane clean-up efforts. If you’d like to get caught up, start with this post then read Part 1 followed thereafter by Part 2 . Then of course, come back here.

Up to speed now?

Lets hit it with these individual 72-hour kit backpacks! I have oodles, and I mean oodles of those small camel-backs that have literally never been used. Now they get to come out of hiding! I knew they had a purpose! They are the perfect size for the kids to be able to carry themselves, have plenty of pockets to stay organized, and are still big enough to put needful supplies in. Each kids’ backpack has:

1. A change of clothes, bagged. (Socks, underwear, pants, shirt.)
2. A jacket or sweatshirt, bagged.
3. A whistle. I found some great whistles on Amazon for next to nothing, complete with lanyards. In Hurricane Harvey, victims experienced an inability to alert nearby rescuers where they were, or that they were even there because of the low visibility from all the foliage in the region.
4. An individual pack of baby wipes.
5. An emergency blanket.
6. A personal first aid kit.
7. A gallon Ziploc with an assortment of snacks: hard candy, fruit snacks, jerky, nuts, etc.
8. A water bottle. I realize that a singular bottle of water is not much in the scheme of things, but it seems like something that would be useful if the need arose.
9. A little dollar store game, some pencils and a little notebook, and a few child specific toys.
10. Child-appropriate personal items such as Chapstick, a travel-sized tube of toothpaste and nifty travel toothbrushes.

I had bigger backpacks to use for myself and Mike Honcho, for which I’ll list a few extra items, than what I put in the kids’ kits. I divided up this list of extras between the two backpacks, so I could optimize space.

1. Zip-locked photocopies of all our important documents: birth certificates, social security cards, etc.
2. Flash drives full of all our pictures. When I really started looking around, I realized the most devastating loss I would feel would be the loss of our prior lives; the kids as babies, the many houses and places we’ve lived…in short, the physical evidence of our memories! So I took several days to copy our pictures onto flash drives.
3. Bagged sets of chargers for our phones.
4. Children’s Tylenol, ibuprofen, Benedryl, and vitamins. Adult bottles of Aleve and ibuprofen. I’m prone to bad headaches, so I also threw in a bottle of headache pills.
5. A larger more comprehensive first aid kit which you can buy from your local supermarket, already put together and boxed in a nice compact way.
6. A knife
7. A waterproof canister of matches
8. Bagged flashlights with extra batteries
9. Further personal items such as travel-sized deodorant, toothpaste/toothbrushes, soap, Q-tips, sunscreen, bug spray and hand lotion.

I also made a  list of the things that would be necessary to grab if we were under an immediate evacuation situation. Having this list already filed away in my brain and written down on paper will help if someday I have to cut and leave while in a panicky state of mind.

1. The kids’ specific items of particular comfort: blankies and stuffed animals.
2. Pillows and sleeping bags
3. My filled and ready-to-go totes, with the camping stove
4. My filing box with all my original documents
5. My saddle and the boom sticks (haha)(kind of, not really)(more haha’s).

What I’ve listed here is by no means an exhaustive list of what should be compiled. However, it’s certainly better than nothing and I feel confident that we would be okay as a family whether we left our house or stayed put until things calmed down. To me, that brings the greatest peace of mind.

What did I miss? What are some things that you would add in your kits for your specific needs? What are some of your goals to beef up your family’s or your personal level of emergency preparedness? Let me know your thoughts!