Making Sure You Are Ready for a Disaster

August 22, 2011 by Gobagsonline

Disasters can occur anywhere, but there are areas of the country that are more prone to natural disasters than others. While everyone should be prepared for the possibility of a disaster those in these areas need to make sure that they have plans in place so that they can care for their families for at least 3 days while they wait for help. There are a number of different ways to do this, from creating your own emergency kits to getting kits that are ready to go and easy to grab should you have to evacuate you have a number of different choices you can make.

The most important thing when getting ready for potential disasters is to make sure that your family's immediate needs are taken care of, most agencies recommend having enough water, food and other items to hold you through 72 hours as this can be how much time it will take for help to arrive. It is also important that your disasters preparations are easy to move, and compact enough to take with you anywhere.

You will want to start by making sure that you have food and water to last your family for that critical 3 day period. While any type of food will do, you can purchase packages that are especially designed to last for a long time, and to be compact enough to not take up a lot of space or weight. The packages are designed to make sure your family's nutritional needs are met since this may be your only source of food during that time.

Water is perhaps the most critical item for your disaster packs, a human being cannot go very long without water, so you must make sure that you have adequate water to supply the needs of your entire family. You should keep in mind the climate in your area, if a disaster happens during a particularly hot time of year then water requirements will be increased.

Water packets can be packed in a bag that again have a long shelf life that you will not need to be worried about, however you should also make sure to also keep bottled water available to take with you in addition to these water packets, to ensure that your family will have adequate water. A gallon a day is the recommended amount, if you must be on foot then you may not be able to carry this much but you should keep it on hand and take as much as possible.

While water and food are going to be the most important essentials there other things you will want to have as well, thermal blankets that can stave off hypothermia in areas where the temperatures drop down at night, as well as for those that may be injured and suffering from shock, a first aid kit that can carry all the basics to deal with minor injuries is also important, with natural disasters injuries are common and it may be that emergency personnel will not be able to reach you right away so you should keep supplies to deal with the minor injuries you might encounter.

Lighting is also important, since disasters don’t always happen during the day, LED lights may be your best bet since they require the least amount of power to keep running making them light and able to burn for more hours on the battery power they have. You can also keep additional batteries to ensure that your lights last for as long as possible.

You may also wish to keep a battery operated or hand crank radio with you, hand crank radios are made just for disasters where there may be no available power to power radios with. You will want to know where to evacuate to as well as what is going on in terms of emergency help and this may be your only way to get such information, since cell phones and land lines often do not work during emergencies such as this.

Finally you will need to find something to pack all your supplies in, they need to ready to go in a moment's notice so packing them in a backpack or other easy to grab solution can offer you the fast mobility that is generally needed in a natural disaster. Some people choose to store them in their vehicles while others store them in a safe place where a disaster cannot reach them.

Go Bags Online offer backpacks ready to go with everything you will need in the event of an emergency. These bags are specially packed to ensure long shelf life of the contents and to ensure that your bags are fully ready to go when you are.