Home Emergency Preparedness

After an event like Hurricane Katrina many families are reviewing their emergency preparedness.  We live in Manhattan, so we saw the same trend at about this time in the year 2001.  But in the post-Katrina era there seems to be a greater emphasis on self-reliance.  The New Yorker's post-9-11 plan involving a familiy re-unification map, change of clothes and Swiss army knife doesn't seem like enough these days.

Here's a fairly comprehensive list from the Red Cross with six steps for disaster preparedness.  This Ready.gov page provides more detailed advice for specific kinds of threats.  FEMA, discredited as it may be in some opinions, offers this site. 

Unlike the flashpoint themes after 9-11, new survival modes address a situation where you have no government support, and you are not likely to get any. (Perhaps as an indication of the new tone, some disaster plans I've read suggest a hand gun as part of your survival kit, so long as you are experienced using firearms, but an unlicensed firearm is a third-degree felony in New York City, and it's easier to import a llama than register a hand gun here.)

Essentially, the Red Cross and FEMA say you need to plan for three days with no support at all.  That's a gallon of water per person a day, including one gallon frozen to keep your refrigerator goods usable for a longer period, plus essentials including sanitation gear. There are lists of preferred canned goods, fuels, and sanitary items. In terms of information management, you are advised to discuss a plan for your family that covers a reasonable range of contingencies, then harden your plan, agree on meeting points, and then be sure to practice.

It is interesting to scroll through lists of recommended emergency gear.  Not unlike a church sermon, the information in these lists is familiar, sensible, and instantly rings true.  But also like a good sermon these lists requires close attention and some affirmative dilligence on your part for them to really change your situation.  If you just glance over one of these lists and nod along you are likely to forget something subtle but essential like flashlight batteries or Sterno.

Plenty of companies like this one ("Lifesecure") will sell you all-purpose disaster kits with medicine, water packs, etc. I'm inclined not to trust the quality of these multi-purpose, one-stop-shopping emergency kits.  The contents include masks, scissors, thermometers, needles, etc.  A real emergency demands a solid pair of scissors, not a flimsy, aluminum pair that is likely found in a cluster-packed, all-purpose kit. 

So when updating my emergency supplies my first impulse was to check Consumer Reports to get their report on a really good first-aid kit. This would be a first step to building up emergency supplies in such a way that I can ensure the quality and durability of each component.  Surprisingly, Consumer Reports is more concerned with the adhesive qualities of seven kinds of bandages than in family first aid kits.  They have a full rating on home pregnancy kits but no evaluation of commercially-available first-aid kits. 

I did like that Consumer Reports told me about some trick emergency gear like the forever flashlight that recharges itself when you shake it.  This seemed like a good tip - at first.  I looked deeper and the user reviews are quite mixed.  You need to shake the flashlight (in must what becomes a ludicrous repetition) for 20-30 seconds to generate "up to" five minutes of flashlight power.  The shake may not be the best answer for those in need of battery-free illumination.

For more information on a first-aid kit for the household I did some research online and found a sensible posting by a veteran of military combat life saver training with a reported 15-year's experience as an EMT (I'm taking his word for it).  He recommends these components for a good first aid kit:

Pin light, penny scissors (medical scissors), SAM Splint, Two rolls of 4” gauze, 4X4 boat (small tub) of sterile dressings X2, medical tape, Duct tape, two pairs of Latex gloves, compress with long ends X2, Large abdominal wound dressings X2, tourniquet, large triangular dressing, alcohol wipes, Bedadine, Aspirin, cold packs X2, road flares X4, emergency rescue disposable blanket, CPR Shield, ammonia ampules, oral airways, and ACE wraps X2, Instant Hand Sanitizer, CPR Pocket Mask with Clamshell, sterile eye pads, bee sting swabs and a wide assortment of band aids.  Q-tips, cotton balls, Hydrogen peroxide, Iodine swaps, pain medications like Advil, Tylenol and Aleve, Cortisone, bag balm, Watkins ointments, topical antibacterial, Pain Relieving Burn Gel, Triple Antibiotic Ointment, Burn Spray and lots of extra dressings and gauzes.

I looked at some of the most touted providers of ready-made, first-aid kits, like Fieldtex and First aid supplies online, in order to compare their kits with the list of core ingredients I found. I also cross referenced this government must-have list. 

Many commercial home-use first-aid kits lack heavy duty items for serious fractures and abdominal injuries.  Some lack elemental items like chemical cold packs.  The worst of them are a stash of different size band-aids mixed with some non-prescription medication packs.  So I turned to camp-related first-aid kits, like this one, which is all about self reliance, being out in the woods and getting no outside help. 

Outdoor sports kits also have the advantage of being organized in their design and very light weight. Many of these kits have special packaging, including instructions and bundled assortments of supplies calculated to deal with every major class of injury.  Other, more broad-based, camper-related survival kits, like this one, round out the list of items I'm seeing on the FEMA and Red Cross sites (like compass, flares, waterproof matches, needles, heavy-duty nylon thread, waterproof writing paper, etc.)  There are also useful shelter items in the camp genre, like 12-hour light flares, water purification tablets and extremely lightweight sleeping sacks for one or two people. 

Comments

[Chaos Live]

"and it's easier to import a llama than register a hand gun here." Actually, Llama is a Spanish handgun manufacturer :-D (and a very poor one at that - to be avoided for those considering firearms).
For NY bound (and similar) folks, theres always the long gun option, several of smaller, take down, pack rifles made specifically for survival kits.

As for the list from the medic - thats a pretty good kit, but I'd expand it a little more for the three day (and from NOLA I think we can safely say thats almost a minimum) situation. Wouldnt add other items, I'd just add more of single use things like gloves, dressings, gauze, CPR shields, etc. Redundancy isnt just good, its essential for longer term work in the austere environment.
I'd also look into getting some prescription meds - some of the medical supply companies specializing in Expedition Medicine, have doctors on staff who are willing to write scripts for kits. A lot of us may also have sympathetic friends with prescriptive authority. Antibiotics and perscription strength pain killers are high on the list of essentials - also, EpiPens, the epinephrine auto-injector for serious allergic reactions. If you cant get immediate medical care, a bad allergic reaction can be as fatal as a heart attack - benadryl/diphenhydramine pills are a great thing to have for simpler allergic reactions, but if someone is going into anaphylactic shock you'll want Epi pens.
I'd also get a thing called a SAM Splint, or a couple of them - they are a malliable aluminum sheet, 36" long and like 4" wide, that when unrolled and creased form a very stiff splint. Cheap too, work good. Better than expedient splinting using Ace Bandage and stiff-backed magazines.
Dont forget family members with special needs - try to have accomidations for them prepared so they wont face undue challenges in a multi-day survival situation. Same for pets with special needs, medications and so on. Simple pet injuries can be dealt with much like human injuries.
It never hurts to have a little training - a two days Healthcare Professional level CPR/First Aid course from the American Heart Assn. is better than nothing. There's some very good medical manuals out there too, particularly U.S. Military manuals from the Special Forces. Wont make you a doctor, but it beats using old ER episodes.
(Of course, all this is just some personal opinion, as an EMT-B, with a serious personal interest in survival, expedition and tactical medicine, and have a lifetime of experience before that living in truly austere environs, and doing care for critters two legged and four. And I'm not responsible, liable, etc. for anything anyone does, etc. yaddity yaddity, disclaimerity disclaimerity and so on.)

Theres a really good site, called Equipped to Survive, www.equipped.org - exceptional resource, above and beyond the FEMA/Red Cross/Ready lists, and heavily grounded in been there, done that, experience.