Earth Is Shaking

Last week Los Angeles was hit by one of the largest earthquakes since that scary 1994 Northridge quake. Today we had another quake and by now you’ve probably heard the news about the massive quake that hit yesterday where hundreds of people are presumed dead in Peru.

We are a few weeks away from giving birth to a girl and while my wife is on autopilot “nesting” I can not help but want to protect my new family.

With the help of my wife, this past weekend we put together an Earthquake Emergency Kit with enough supplies that should allow us to survive a major catastrophe for a full week. It’s quite the kit.

Back in the Northridge quake, we had no water or power for a few days and the water that did run was highly contaminated. Also, because we live in such a big city all the supermarkets were sold out on almost everything a few hours following the quake. Because goods were flying off the shelves so fast, looting began and all hell broke lose real fast.

That being said, we have built an emergency supply kit so we are not dependent on finding food, water, first aid or sanitary supplies. Additionally we picked up radios, axes, propane stoves, batteries and pet food.

Putting such a kit together requires a real gut check. You’re throwing items into a large duffel bag and you have to ask yourself, is this something that we need and will save a life?

There are plenty of earthquake emergency supply lists to follow and believe me when I say you need a list when shopping otherwise shopping can get out of hand.

One thing people don’t think about after a major disaster is the fact we become almost a cash only society. Since power is out, people are not accepting your debit / credit card.

So it is extremely important to have cash on hand. As for how much cash one needs is dependent of their life style and what they have planned in case of an emergency. In our case we said we need enough cash to “buy” our way out of Los Angeles and survive for a month or so.

Its scary thinking about stuff like this but knowing we have that kit in our house provides us with a sense of reassurance that we can survive in case of an emergency.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2007 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Shandy Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.