Your emergency can happen in just seconds
It was Day 3 of the flooding following Hurricane Harvey that I finally told my kids, “Get your emergency kits ready to go by the back door. We may have to leave if the flooding gets any closer.”
Day by day, hour by hour, floodwaters had crept closer to our neighborhood. One street at a time was reporting flooded cars and homes, and I was starting to think we would be next. After all, just the night before we had heard on the radio, “Residents, get on your rooftops, wave something white, and wait to be rescued by boat.”
That announcement was for people just a half-mile away, and reality hit me hard. We could easily be next.
Whether it’s floodwater, fire, or some other calamity, you may have just seconds to make the decision for an emergency evacuation, and in those seconds, there won’t be time to make rational decisions.
When I first began thinking about the possibility of evacuating from our home, I visualized sheer panic. Immediately, I realized the need for a written list of procedures posted in two or three locations and a family meeting or two to ensure that everyone was informed and on board. As I put our evacuation plan together, five basic steps became apparent as did the need to assign certain tasks to certain family members in order to make the evacuation swift and organized.
When everyone has designated jobs and knows exactly what to do, your family can be packed and out of town before most other families grab their toothbrushes. To make this happen and avoid hysteria, chaos, and needless tears, your family needs to organize an emergency evacuation plan. Bugging out can be better streamlined and less traumatic than you might think.
Follow these five simple steps to create and organize your own emergency evacuation plan!
I put this at the top of my list because of the words in Proverbs 12:10a, “The godly care for their animals,” and because I’m crazy about our two dogs and 3 cats. There were so many unnecessary tragedies that involved beloved pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, and after watching that unfold, I determined that I would never leave ours behind.
Bugging out is difficult enough for the human members of the family, but the excitement, fear, and flurry of activity will be highly stressful for your animals.
Once you’ve made the decision to evacuate, one of the first steps should be to determine how best to care for each animal. Certainly, most cats and dogs will need to be either evacuated with you or transferred to a safer location. Either way, you don’t need them underfoot as you rush around, so a first step will be to put them in crates or carriers. Delegate this task to one or two family members.
Depending on the size of your dogs and cats, you may want to first load their crate in your vehicle and then the animal(s). So, first on my list is to load the dog crates in the Tahoe, and put each dog inside. Prior to this we’ve been taking them on frequent drives around town so being in a crate is more of a treat than something to be feared.
Pre-position collars, leashes, and water and food bowls in the crate, along with some dog food, double-bagged in two large Zip-Locs. (Ants love dog food!) Add the dog, and you’re good to go!
If your cat isn’t used to being in a carrier, now is the time for Crate-the-Cat practice! Along with her crate, pack a small package of kitty litter and her food.
If you’re the proud owner of fish, reptiles, rodents and/or farm animals, consider whether or not you’ll take them along, leave them on their own with a plentiful supply of food and water, or transport them to another location. Have a Plan B for their care in case circumstances suddenly change. For more specific tips, read this.
While the designated family member is rounding up the animals, delegate who will be responsible for the following.
As you drive away from your home, no doubt you’ll have feelings of sadness and, perhaps, loss. A written plan to protect your home will increase the chances of having a home to come home to. Here is a checklist I’ve used.
Hopefully, you’ve been keeping an eye on weather and news reports and have made sure your vehicle’s gas tank is full. In addition to that simple, obvious step, here are a few more.
Now that your plan is finished, discuss each step with your family and delegate each task to family members. Even the youngest will want to be useful, and in a crisis situation, assigned tasks will help defuse feelings of panic or confusion. It’s more difficult to become hysterical when you have something to organize and focus on. Not impossible, just more difficult!
There’s one final step. Will this really work? How much time will it take, and will there be any room for passengers in your vehicle once it’s loaded? It’s now time for an evacuation drill. This will help refine your plan and give everyone a real-life rehearsal. Post your final plan around the house, and then, when they least expect it, start the drill.
Could your family evacuate in 30 minutes? Run through this assignment together one night this week, and see how close you are to that 30 minute deadline. Here are a few steps to get your emergency evacuation plan streamlined and speedy.
Once you have your plans and preparations in order, it’s time. Yell out, “Evacuate! Evacuate!”, set a timer, and see how close you get to that thirty-minute goal. Evaluate the results.
An evacuation is an extremely tense and fearful experience. Just ask anyone who has had to run for their lives from an oncoming flood or firestorm. Preparedness helps take some of the panic out of the process, and when the whole family is informed and is involved with the planning, you can count on getting out quickly and efficiently.
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I’m trying to organize our stuff to help make it easier to grab and go, if needed. We don’t have an organized plan like yours yet, but one thing I think is good to have is a shoe box size plastic box for the front seat of the car. We have maps of our state and the ones near us that we could easily need to head into, small flashlight or headlamp, chemical stick, paracord, EMT shears (they can cut safety belts if there’s an accident), and other small items that we don’t normally carry in the car, but could need close at hand in a bug-out situation. We also bought topographic maps of our state and those same adjoining states. The ability to see which roads do NOT involve going over big hills (or rivers) could be important. And in the meantime, the kids can learn a new skill in reading those.
As part of staging things, our first aid supplies are now in the laundry room. Odd place? Yes, but more practical than the bathroom. Other than slip and fall, where are most of your families accidents? The bathroom? The kitchen? the yard (especially kids)? the garage? The laundry room is convenient to all three of the latter, and we don’t have to track dirt through the house to get hydrogen peroxide and bandaids on the kids latest boo boos. Plus, in the event of a bug-out, it’s quick and easy to get out.
Thats a great idea, thanks!
I’ve seen a few local companies that sell used laptops for under $200, some for under $100. For basic information storage and retrieval, they are hard to beat. At those prices, someone could purchase two of them, and have the second on hand for spare parts.
Data storage should be on the hard drive, a USB thumb drive and where practical, hard copy.
One reason to have a spare laptop is to use it for electronic storage only, and then keep the laptop itself stored in the type of container that would be safe from an EMP. It may sound a little out there, but stored information would be invaluable — both personal data as well as information pertaining to survival. I need to do a little more research, but one container that sounded simple enough is a galvanized trash can, taped shut. I was thinking of updating our information each month via a flash drive and then re-sealing the can. You have a great website, by the way! I’m going to spend some time reading your info tonight.
We’ve been trying to figure out how to store things in case of an EMP. What have you found?
I’ve been printing everything out. There’s no telling whether you’ve properly protected your data electronically and power is not likely to be available in an emergency. True, paper’s bulky, but I’m planning on bugging in as possible and only grabbing the necessities for bug out.
Thanks! (I just saw your reply…. ) The site is coming along bit by bit, or is that “byte by byte”??
It’s not out there to protect your information from EMP – to a preparedness minded individual. To protect the laptop, find a metal container with a lid. Some ammo cans will do the job, and have room for a few other items. Things to remember are:
1) The device can NOT touch the can. Wrap it in clean rags. You might even set the ragged-device in a loose plastic bag, open top. The reasons are that you don’t want conduction via met-to-metal, and you don’t want condensation to collect inside a plastic bag.
2) Use a desiccant in the container, unless you are going into it frequently (which allows for drying out.) Temperature changes will cause some sweating inside the can, hence the desiccant. KEEP IT DRY.
3) SEAL the container. Ammo cans have rubber gaskets. Use a metal gasket as an addition, in the joint, and make sure it is “crushed” when the lid closes. Aluminum foil in a roll will work, and so will the static dispersing seals on some computer equipment. I prefer the foil. Remove the paint on the can’s contact surfaces to make a metal-metal union.
4) If you want to use another container, make sure it can be sealed.
Gaps in a sealed can act as a “slot antenna”. The smaller and fewer in number the slots, the less chance of something from within the broad spectrum of wave lengths from an EMP device getting inside the container. The little gremlins come in all sizes, and the look for a hole that fits them. In the moment that the energy passes through your location, the charge builds up on the surface of metal objects. Openings allow the charge to run around the inside of the container and hit the metal items within. This is why we try to seal cans…. to allow the charge to run the outer surface and dissipate.
The enemies of a Faraday Cage are gaps, metal contact with the contents and moisture.
A variation on the laptop update is to burn your documents onto CDs, which will last many years. Update them, and not the hard drive. Keep two sets in different locations in your home. Only open up the laptop every 3 months to charge (oh, yes, keep the battery OUT of the laptop, and refer to your docs to see if storage is done full or empty for your particular machine….), and to test /update. Then pack it up again.
Best Buy has “netbooks” for $250 that blow away anything we could get just a few years ago. At that rate, consider getting 2 of them for redundancy and parts.
I found a flashdrive that helped me put my life in order without much effort. But what is really unique is the Emergency Preparedness Page that has a check list of everything needed in case of emergency and a page with website links to Fema and other important sites. Very cool. I wish I had this last year when I had 10 minutes to evacuate my home from a wildfire. Eight of those minutes you stand stunned wondering what to take first. Now I have everything important to me, my family, my pets information with me at all times. And it’s not expensive. It’s called Life Link Safe.
This is a great article and I am printing it to remind myself of more things I have yet to do, like store the rest of our photos in CDs. I got about half way through. Thanks for keeping us on track 🙂
One important thing to think about with external device storage is – how much banging around can the device take? Many external hard drives are relatively fragile, since they have a spinning disk inside. Plus, sometimes the cheaper ones just fail for no discernable reason. I’d highly recommend anyone going the external storage route buy at least two externals, or better yet, buy solid state drives. They’re more expensive, but MUCH less likely to die if they’re exposed to rough handling. Otherwise USB thumb drives are a great choice, even if you can store less per stick.
Personally I’ve gone with the USB stick approach, because it allows me to sort each stick by category – eg all photos on one, all emergency info on another, inventory lists on another, etc. This allows me to save time when I need to find things in a hurry – I know exactly which USB stick to grab.
Hi, I was looking for an appropriate place to ask this question for a couple of days and this is as close to it as I can find. The short of it is, I am preparing for an EMP (and then I’ll be prepared for all else as well). I am looking at a 1973 Ford F250 Pickup truck. It’s in excellent condition and everything works. But my question is I have heard that the old cars will work if they do not have the electronic or computer chipped parts in it as they will be unaffected by an EMP. But one mechanic just told me that the carburator and starter will blow out and to keep an extra part in “a lead lined box”. I know he meant a Faraday cage and I will follow the instructions above for one but is that necessary for even the old cars? He said I would need to keep the extra parts and learn how to replace them after an EMP. Won’t this truck be unaffected by an EMP? Thanks.
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To me, more emphasis should be placed on #10 “Where would you go?”. I have at least 2 bugout locations within half a tank of fuel. In a loaded down pickup truck, thats 100 miles, or so. One is a small parcel of land (.7 acre) I bought for less than $4k, and is near a small town. I put in a 2 in well, with a hand pump. I also had a power pole installed with a campground style rv hookups. 30amp and 2 115 amp hookups. That was about $2k more. This year I will build a shed there to house more emergency supplies. I camp there 4 times a year, just to keep the place maintained. The second place is a small motel that is American owned, and same owners for 15 years. I have developed a good rapport with them over the last 2 years, and in case there are no rooms available, they will let me camp with my small enclosed trailer. But overall, this was an excellent list!!
That’s a great plan. My concern is for people who can’t have that type of situation or don’t want it. For those people and maybe even for someone like you, check out my article about bug out options, https://thesurvivalmom.com/11-last-minute-last-ditch-evacuation-locations/
I am an electrical engineer & have been required to design EMP & SCIF shielding for various – ahem – high security national facilities over the years. Many of these were designed to have to be able to survive a nuclear event.
A couple comments on EMP shielding: something is better than nothing. However, a strong EMP ‘leaks’ through non-electrically conductive joints. I see a note about an ammo container with a gasket is mentioned. Unfortunately, this is not a robust EMP shield, since RF (Radio Frequencies) can ‘leak’ through a rubber gasket. The metal trash can is better, but the small air gap around the lid is not as impregnable as you might think.
Heavy foil, wrapped and overlapped around a device would be pretty good, as would a can which has a tightly fitting metal lid.
The business about putting something in a plastic container or otherwise insulating it from the walls is not something I’m familiar with…….wouldn’t hurt, but but I don’t see the significant benefit (except that it keeps batteries from shorting & discharging).
The best EMP protection is a metal (steel, copper or aluminum) box, with a tight fitting electrically conductive joint. The problem with aluminum is that the joint forms an insulating layer when exposed to oxygen, so this needs special attention. As an example example, we used to weld galvanized steel conduit at the threaded joints to truly shield high magnitude EMP (this is beyond what most people would have to deal with, I believe).
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