Emergency Kits (Part 1): What Do We Need?
By Melissa Spencer
“We should have an emergency kit.”
Keith and I have been married for 20 years now and we’ve been saying that for…about 20 years now.
We’ve done a few things over the years. We had a first aid kit, a (hopefully still working) flashlight, an ice scraper, and jumper cables in each car.
About 10 years ago we bought a basic bucket survival kit (that has since expired).
Last year, after being without power for almost 3 days and having to borrow a generator, we bought a gas-powered generator and several extension cords.
Last summer we had to evacuate due to a nearby wildfire. We were lucky to have a safe place to go with family nearby, but it got us thinking: what if we didn’t?
Natural disasters seem to be happening more and more often. A cyberattack causing a disruption to the power grid and/or other essential systems is more likely than ever. Even a nuclear attack doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore. Any of these happening is out of our control.
But what IS in our control is putting together an emergency kit and plan so we aren’t completely unprepared if/when an emergency happens.
So we decided this was the year to turn our good intentions into action.
Over the next few weeks, we thought we’d share what we’ve been doing to prepare our family for emergency situations. Please remember we aren’t experts. Just parents who are doing our best to be prepared.
Here is a list of our planned topics.
Part 3: How do we organize all this stuff and where are we going to put it?
Part 5: What did all this cost? And The Emergency Planning Top 10 Checklist
(This schedule and the topics are subject to change for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, the whim of the authors.)
Part 1: What do we need?
Let’s see…if only there was a resource where we could enter a search term and come up with endless answers and suggestions. Oh, wait. 😉
If you google “survival kit” there is no shortage of premade kits available for purchase. We decided that, while these would be very helpful in an emergency, they didn’t quite fit what we were looking for. Most were for 4 people; we are a family of 6. The really good ones were both expensive and included stuff we either didn’t feel was necessary for our circumstances and/or didn’t include stuff that we felt would be helpful.
So, we decided to make our own.
I started by using the internet to help me compile a ridiculously long list of possible things to include. And from this overwhelming wealth of information, I concluded that we needed to identify the scenario(s) that were most likely for us and what we wanted to be prepared for. We talked it over and decided to focus on the following:
Extensive car emergency kits for each of our 2 vehicles
Emergency kit that would cover the essentials for our family of 6 (and our dog) in each of following scenarios:
All emergencies
Shelter-in-place emergency (for 2+ weeks)
Evacuation emergency out in the elements (for 1+ week)
From here, we made our list and I started researching and ordering and buying things like crazy. A few items we already had on hand, but the majority we had to purchase. Here is the emergency planning supply list we came up with. (We’ll cover the car kit next time.)
Here’s a downloadable PDF of the above picture: Family Emergency Planning Supplies
If you’d like to get into the thought process behind what we decided to include, read on. Otherwise, we hope you found this blog post entertaining at least, and helpful at best.
Food and Water
When it came to the most important part: how much food and water to stockpile, it was a bit of a balancing act. We want to have enough to get us through an emergency, but not be too difficult to store or transport.
For food, the American Red Cross suggests 3 days’ worth and other sites say 1 week is better. We decided on a week’s worth of packed and transportable food (3 days’ worth of purchased emergency meals and 4 days of meals/snacks via canned and boxed goods). We also know that if we had to shelter-in-place, our pantry, refrigerator, and freezer would keep us going for at least another week (even if some of the food combinations might get, well, interesting toward the end of that period).
A few other thoughts on food:
It would have been a lot easier (though more expensive) to just stick with purchasing emergency meals, but we liked the idea of having some more “normal” foods available. Canned and boxed goods have a decent shelf life and we bought stuff we will actually use when we need to swap it out when it’s coming up to its expiration date.
I’ve tried to note any product expiration dates on my lists and have a reminder in my calendar to swap out any soon-to-expire food twice a year. A helpful hint I found online was to do this whenever daylight savings time changes. (Side note: This is also a great time to check all the batteries in your home smoke detectors.)
I also wrote the expiration date in permanent marker on each food container so it’s easy to find the ones to replace.
Another note on expiration dates: there can be a huge variance in expiration dates from brand to brand. For example, I was a little shocked to see that one brand of canned peaches had an expiration date over a year later than a different brand. Buy the ones that can stay in your kit longer without replacing, even if it costs a little bit more.
Splurge on a “morale booster” or two to add to your kit. We added a bag of Skittles and some hot cocoa packets just for that purpose. Obviously not necessary for nutritional purposes, but it sure would be nice to have a little treat to help lift spirits when you really need it, especially if you have little ones.
It’s also important to think about how you’re going to prepare the food you have. We have a gas stove at home so if we lose power, we can still use a lighter to start up the stove to heat water and other food. But if we were out in the wild, that changes things completely. We looked into a lot of options on this one and decided to get a portable wood camping stove. It’s compact, lightweight, and able to be fueled with charcoal briquettes or wood/sticks/etc. A small camping cookware set rounded out this part of our kit.
We also invested in a set of camping dishes that includes plates, bowls, cups, and silverware, as well as cooking utensils and items for basic food prep. Could we grab these at home? Of course. But the idea is to have everything we need self-contained in the kit.
And don’t forget multiple sources to start a fire! We packed lighters, waterproof matches, and flint (no doubt inspired by our longtime love of the show Survivor).
Water was a tricky calculation as well. It’s recommended to have on hand 1 gallon of water per person and pet per day for 3 days. For us that would mean we need to store a minimum of 21 gallons! We reached that number by purchasing nine 1-gallon jugs of water, a 7-gallon Aqua-tainer (a reusable jug with a handle and a spout), and a flat from Costco of 40 individual water bottles that equals 5+ gallons.
We also purchased and/or researched other products to help us purify the water we would need beyond that including:
Water purification tablets
Water purification straws
How to safely use bleach to purify water
The ever faithful ‘boil your water to purify it’ option
It helps that we live in an area that has a lot of rivers and lakes nearby so even if our home water supply got cut off, we should have some natural resources to get water to purify.
Power, Light, & Communication
Power, light, and communication are big ones to consider, as we discovered when we lost power for almost 3 days last year after a big windstorm. Thankfully, a relative had a generator we could borrow during that time, but it really emphasized how good it would be to have one of our own, especially if we lost power during the winter months.
Investing in a NOAA Weather Radio (ideally one that can be battery or crank powered) is also really smart. They are designed to provide information to the public during severe events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, and floods when other communication methods may be down.
A few more thoughts on power, light, & communication:
Since the most likely scenario in which we would use the generator is while sheltering-in-place after losing power, we also needed to make sure we had enough of the right length power cords to get power to where it is most needed.
Considering what generator to buy could be a whole other blog post but basically, do your research. What size do you need? How loud does it run?
Never ever use a generator indoors or in a partially enclosed space! The exhaust can be deadly. Have it running at least 6 feet away from your house and bring the power in via extension cord. (As helpful as they are, there are a lot of safety considerations with portable gas generators. It’s worth really understanding how to safely use them if you have one.)
Don’t forget to buy and store fuel for the generator. I’ve been told that it’s best to buy ethanol-free gas which has a longer shelf life than regular gas.
Gas-powered generators work better if you fire them up for a minute or two about once a month.
Consider packing a small plug-in lamp inside your emergency kit to light a main room in the house.
It’s better to not store batteries inside all your flashlights and lanterns. They are more likely to corrode. We keep a bag of the correct batteries for each flashlight and lantern taped to the device. According to my research (aka: googling and quickly clicking on the first 3 articles to make sure they agree), Alkaline batteries have a shelf life of 5-10 years so we shouldn’t have to replace them for a while, but I also added them to the expiration list.
Make sure to have a way to charge your cell phones, even if you don’t have a generator. We found some battery-powered lanterns that have USB charging ports in them.
First Aid / Shelter / Sanitation & Hygiene / Tools / Pets / Other
I feel like the list for these categories doesn’t need as detailed of an explanation. But just a couple thoughts:
Liquid bleach is a good thing to include in your kit as it can doubly serve as sanitization and a water purification tool. Just make sure you have instructions printed out and included on that topic with your kit.
A 5 gallon bucket can serve a multitude of purposes in case of emergency. Use it for washing clothes or dishes, to collect rain water, bail flood water, or even as an emergency toilet (although I highly recommend putting a trash or other disposable bag in there first).
Keeping a gas turn-off tool with your kit will ensure you know where it is when you need it. (Note to self: double check that WE know where our gas and water shutoffs are and that we know how to turn them off. Hmmmm…)
This might be going on the extreme side, but we chose to purchase some Potassium Iodide tablets. According to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Potassium iodide, if taken in time and at the appropriate dosage, blocks the thyroid gland's uptake of radioactive iodine and thus could reduce the risk of thyroid cancers and other diseases that might otherwise be caused by exposure to radioactive iodine that could be dispersed in a severe nuclear accident.” Hopefully we’ll never need them. And they should never be taken unless specifically advised by the health department, emergency management officials, or your doctor. But with the crazy world we live in, we decided to have some on hand for our family.
We’re still deciding whether to add an additional duffle bag that has an extra set of clothes for each member of the family. With our growing kids, we’d have to update it fairly frequently. And it doesn’t seem like it would take that long for each member of the family to grab one extra set of clothing. But, if we truly want our kit to be as grab-and-go as possible, it’s something we are still considering.
I’m sure there are other things we could and maybe even should include. But we feel pretty good about what we’ve compiled to help us get through a variety of serious emergencies without the supplies needing to take up a whole room of our house to store.
Finally, here’s a picture of all the supplies we’ve collected for our emergency kits. (We’ll go over the car kit and list in next week’s blog post.) And if the large pile of supplies in this picture gives you anxiety like it did me at first, have no fear. We’ll go over how we organized and are storing all this stuff in an upcoming week.
Our emergency supply stash (and no, we’re not planning on taking the piano)
Blessings,
Melissa (and Keith)