The first thing I did was pull out my family's go to bag from last year's tornado season. In 2008, my community experienced what meteorologists call a derecho, which is the equivalent to an inland hurricane. While it wasn't as devastating as some storms, it left us without power for about a week. Ever since then, I've tried to be sort-of prepared come storm season since we do live in tornado alley, too. That being said, our one emergency backpack had a lot of the essentials already. However not only did it lack food and clothing, but we added another member to our family since last spring!
The first thing I did was purchase a bag for each of us. Should we be separated we needed to be prepared. I decided our bags should contain mostly the exact same things, with a few individualized additions to each. My husband is more engineer savvy, so he got a multipurpose tool. I can sew and went to nursing school (though I never finished), so I got the emergency sewing kit and big first aid kit. My daughter got colored pencils, a notepad, and playing cards.
All of our bags contained the following:
Hygiene- Soap, shampoo, hair brush, toothpaste, tooth brush, hand sanitizer get, deodorant, nail clippers and metal nail file, re-wetting eye drops, sunscreen, and pony tail holders.
First Aid- Band aids (Gwen and Teddy got Toy Story along with some standard Red Cross band aids), alcohol swabs, antibiotic ointment, face masks, and tissues.
Food/Water- Water purification tablets (read more about these below), water bottle, three bottles of bottled water, a reusable spork, pocket knife, protein bars, beef jerky, and a bag of brown rice.
Energy- Flashlight, glow sticks, matches, compass/whistle/thermometer in-one, and a candle.
Clothing- Socks, underwear, shirt, pants, work gloves, an emergency blanket, and plastic poncho.
Here's a picture of some of the bags that went into Gwen's kit.
Everything should be placed in organized baggies and sealed tightly in the case the backpack gets wet. I thought long an hard about putting a pocket knife in my five-year-old's kit, but my reasoning stands that if she were to ever be separated from our family, I have given her the tools to survive.
These are the water purification tablets.
After watching The Colony, I can proudly say that in tough times given charcoal, sand, a bucket, a pot, a fire, and some river water, I could purify my own water. But in a crunch, these will come in handy. One tablet will purify one quart of water making it safe to drink. They're super cheap, too.
The BIG First Aid kit
The BIG First Aid kit as you can see was one of those prepackaged Johnson & Johnson kits, but I beefed it up a bit. I added vitamins, q-tips, extra gloves, more gauze, more tape, tooth picks, matches, tweezers, more alcohol swabs, and more ibuprofen.
Lastly in the bags, but possibly the most important- our guide to survival- a personalized binder that includes our family emergency plan, emergency phone numbers/addresses, family photos, medical histories, maps, handy tips (things like 50+ uses for baking soda, how to clean a fish, etc.), and copies of important documents like driver's licenses and birth certificates. I also threw in some stories, games, and coloring pages for the kids. These are neatly placed in plastic sleeves with dividers.
Now, I know that tonight and every night, on every road trip, and in any instance of emergency or natural disaster, I can breathe a little easier knowing I have prepared for the worst and prayed for the best! :)
