A disaster -- of any kind, of any magnitude -- offers great lessons for those of us fortunate enough not to have been undone by it. And I'm sure better lists than mine exist on the Internet and in the compulsive checklists of government bureaucrats as to how to survive one.
But, having spent time on the Gulf, and having contemplated what Nature and other terrorists could do without much trouble, I'm setting about getting ready over the next couple of months for a cataclysm of Katrineque proportions.
Here's a list that I had vaguely conceived of, that I have now committed to paper, due to the devastation on the Gulf Coast. I've already got some of this together, but there's much more to do.
- Lay in the goods. Enough drinking water, canned food, first aid supplies, basic tools and emergency communications equipment to get my family through a week of isolation.
- Agree on a remote gathering place. Our son is the only one who doesn't drive. Everyone else in our family is, we hope, going to heed any evacuation order as quickly as possible, and meet in our remote gathering place, in Wisconsin, about 50 miles north of our house. And it's pretty well supplied.
- Sharpen those basic survival skills. Making a fire, cleaning and cooking a fish or a small mammal, building a bivouac, staving off hypothermia, heat stroke, dehydration, disinfecting a wound. Any disaster will require at least one of these skills, probably more.
- Learn to shoot a gun. Have access to one. Go ahead, accuse me of being a reactionary, a card-carrying member of the NRA, or one of those wild-eyed survivalists. You can carry my gear while I load the gun to get a rabbit or coyote for dinner, or, God forbid, keep rapists and thugs at bay. Then you can thank me, and do the dishes in the stream over there.
- Open a bank account somewhere else. Somewhere you might go for long periods of time if your entire community were devastated. Treat it like a savings account, and be disciplined about it.
- Stay in shape. But keep a few extra pounds on. They might see you through. Besides, your body fat helps make you more buoyant.
- Form a "portable community." Who will you help in an emergency? Who will help you?
Does it seem a little extreme to you? Do you figure that you'd have had the sense and the wherewithal to get out of New Orleans or Biloxi or Gulfport?
Do you think that's as bad as it could get?
--T.A.
UPDATE: And you want to update your plans pretty regularly, and not get too complacent: as this article shows, just last year, disaster preparedness officials were patting themselves on the back for achieving a high level of readiness for just such an event.
I was thinking the same thing this morning. The one about the bank account is a good idea.
Posted by: nappy40 | September 02, 2005 at 12:10 PM
I know how you feel. After the last shaker here I finally ponied up for earthquake insurance. A grand a year (ouch!) but just silencing that nagging corner of my brain was worth it.
Posted by: Vikki | September 02, 2005 at 03:35 PM
Your update makes me think: how much effort is preparedness really worth? And I don't ask simply out of laziness.
There are some number of people in the U.S. who may be said to be adequately prepared for disaster. In addition to doing the things you recommend, they also: move out to the country and form homesteads; maintain emergency shelters underground for protection against anything up to a thermonuclear war; and subscribe to Backwoods Home magazine. I don't really want to live like that - do you?
Death and suffering are awful, and I agree that it makes sense to do what we can to avoid them. Yet at the same time, they are unavoidable; an aspect of every human life that we must all experience. There's only so far one can go in preparing for disaster without sacrificing all possibility of living in the moment. As someone who'd like to live as much of my life as possible fully alert to the present, I'm not sure how much disaster preparedness is worth to me.
Posted by: Tom Strong | September 05, 2005 at 06:06 PM