In the office, I keep a duffel bag with work gloves, 24" pry bar, hard hat (cheap at your local home store), dust masks, and about six liters of water under my desk.

I also include a couple of 6" emergency bandages as well as a couple of boxes of 3x4" non-stick pads and several rolls of tape.

The first aid supplies are intended to use on other survivors. The idea is those are basically give-aways.

I suggest you pre-stash any supplies you may need and not rely on the vending machine. Whatever is in the vending machine is going to become "community property", and it is going to be way too little to address the needs of your entire office.

I plan to migrate the climbing harness into this bag as well along with about 200' of 5mm New England Tech Cord and an PMI Personal Escape Decender*. I think I'll leave my existing 3mm Tech Cord in my pack, but moving the harness to the duffel with save a fair amount of weight and some bulk.

Over all, the idea is if you are stuck in the building, you need water and potentially some extraction leverage. But... ultimately the duffel isn't hugely valuable and is intended to be disposable in case of emergency.

-john


* Yes, yes, yes, I know. This is risky and non-optimal gear. I know.

Personally, I wouldn't be very inclined to try to swim the canal. Basically, not only are you going to increase your risk by becoming cold and wet, potentially soaking your gear, but you could get run over by a boat.

My approach is to know about all the alternative crossing points (make sure you have maps), and chances are at least a couple of them will be passable.

Even if that doesn't work, remember that after Sept., 11, boats voluntarily started ferrying people away from the area. While you can't rely on it, I suspect there is a reasonable chance something similar will happen. There are just too many boats and too many people wanting to get across. Potential will happen.

If all else fails, you could 1) Wait. Something is going to happen, or 2) Go the long way around (south around the lake). Not optimal, but I suspect one of the other things will pan out before that is required.

If you are warm dry and healthy, you are not in immediate danger. Don't put yourself at increased risk to cut a bit of time. Well... Unless you are Bear Grylls. In which case... Have fun!

-john

Regarding the building Wolfepack is working in, I think it is a toss up. While yes, some of those buildings are un-reinforced, a lot of them were also old warehouses and had VERY HEAVY DUTY wood beam construction.

Liquefaction might or might not happen at any given location.

I do think they are very non-optimal as I worked in a similar one (in almost the same place) until about a year ago and I certainly appreciate the risk.

But the way I look at it, you take some precautions (hard hat, extrication gear, etc.) and you take your chances.

If the building collapses and you die... well, not much you are going to do about it.

If you are hurt.. Well, be prepared as much as possible and have enough water to survive for several days until someone digs you out.

Otherwise, I see Wolfepack's approach of having his kit as a good one. It keeps your options open. No point in giving up before you start.

-john

Random thoughts.

Over time, the personal hygiene towelettes have ALWAYS dried out on me. They don't seem like they should, but they have. At this point I don't bother anymore.

Food tends to get crushed and otherwise get nasty over time. I've taken to protecting mine by putting in a hard case and stick with crunchy foods instead of soft foods.

As suggested, swap out the iodine based water tablets for Micropur. The iodine tablets can get pretty nasty if the seal on the bottle is not perfect. The Micropur individual packaged tablets are the cat's meow.

You probably don't need the mosquito net. :-)

You probably are better off with more, larger zip ties than different sizes. Probably don't need the twist ties.

Add water to your leave-at-office kit. Lots of water.

I'd beef up my travel FAK and optimize my leave-at-office FAK to be trama only, but that's just me.

I'd also try to keep in mind what you have in your FAK for convenience, and what you have for actual first aid. This helped me a lot, and now I actually keep them separate. This means I don't raid the FAK when I have a headache. This also helps the actual FAK to be smaller, and more focused on more serious problems.

Keep your cell on your body. You may not have the chance or ability to go back for it.

I'd also keep the chargers. I have plug in, 12v and AA battery powered chargers in my kit. But, I'd suggest trying to make the system as generic and interchangeable as possible. All mine are USB based, and I carry a very short micro and mini USB cable.

I'd love to add a decent portable solar panel to this mix, but haven't managed to yet as the decent ones appear a bit bulky and expensive.

Review your batteries against your actual (projected) needs. It is easy to over-do it on batteries, and it is easy to get the wrong mix (use up all the AAs but have too many AAAs or some such). Standardize on a battery type if possible. Check to see if your specific devices will accept the lithium cells (for example, my GPS will not operate on lithium batteries).

Truecrypt is excellent encryption for USB drives, multi-platform and free!

With regard to GPS in phones or other similar devices, make sure you find an application that has off-line map capability and make sure you download the maps you may need ahead of time. You don't want accessing your map to be dependent on Internet access!

On the Apple devices, I like MotionX GPS application. I have a dumb phone, but I have the MotionX GPS application on my iPod Touch and iPad. Both are jailbroken to allow me to use a bluetooth GPS module (BTstack GPS).

My assumption is there is a similar package for Android based devices.

The other thing to consider here is that having a device that you can actually read information on is going to be handier than the USB stick. On my devices I use an encrypted "password" application called eWallet which can sync to my PC to carry any private data I need and I also have a bunch of non-sensitive data on there (reference materials, etc.).

Note that with the iPod Touch and the upcoming small Android based tablets you don't need an expensive data plan to have these types of capabilities.

WRT radio scanners, note that a lot of stuff has gone digital trunked around here, so it is useful to have a scanner with that capability. That said, the digital trunking capable scanners are expensive and bulky, non-intuitive and tend to need some pre-programming to be useful. I'd love it if someone can point me to a device that proves me wrong.

WRT boots -- if your boots are too heavy to wear comfortably all the time, I suggest you look at a different pair. I wear my Vasque Sundowners year round, all the time. They are basically a light weight hiking boot, but have full ankle support.

Basically, Murphy says that if you don't wear them all the time, that you won't be wearing them when something happens. And sensible footwear is high on the list for a 20 mile walk through rubble.

As noted before, you want the basics on your person at all times. I'd move your knife to your body, and perhaps a small flashlight. When it comes down to it, what you have on you is the only thing you can count on having at all times. I've added a firesteel to my on-body kit for this reason.

I think I saw a suggestion to carry a fixed blade knife, but IIRC, that will run you afoul of Seattle's laws. I like the Doug Ritter (full size) RSK, and have a backup knife in my pack.

The sawzall blades stink when not attached to a sawzall. Hacksaw is probably better when human powered. I actually stopped carrying my hacksaw blade and now just rely on having a diamond file on my multitool. I think the cutters and full size pry bar are probably the right tools for most earthquake jobs. If you have the space in the office kit, just throw in a full size hacksaw.

Full size crowbar, cutters and hack saw seem like they should cover you well. Once you are on the road, your need for these tools is probably greatly reduced unless you plan to try to dig people out all the way home. If that is the case, you probably want to take the full size tools with you.

All in all, I think you have done great. I think the main thing is to keep in mind what your objectives are and then think through what you need to achieve the objective and what you don't need. Be ruthless about pruning what doesn't support your objectives -- it will give you more space for things that do.

But... give yourself the OK to make some decisions that you know are not logical. Sometimes it is OK to do what we want instead of what is logically the best answer.

For example, I carry a knife on my person, a multitool on my person, and have a backup knife in my pack. It is probably not logical given my objectives to carry the backup knife. Likewise, I probably have more light devices (flashlights, marker lights, etc.) than is strictly logical. I face it, and I'm OK with it.

From time to time unpack the kit, look it over and see what you might have taken out and forgotten to put back in, what you might have added that you don't really need, and what might have expired and what you might have changed your mind about. I just did this today after looking at your post and found all of those were true!

Good luck!

-john

A couple of other real world Seattle area disaster possibilities.

Windstorm.

Back in 2006 (I think) we had a heck of a windstorm. While it may not affect the downtown core as much, it wrecked havoc with the burbs, mostly tree-falls. It also closed the I520 bridge. I happened to be trying to get from the east side to downtown, and I got stuck for many hours as all sorts of roads were impassable. And all I was trying to do is turn around and return.

Even if the downtown core is OK, it still can cause you problems getting home since you leave in the burbs. In this case, the more wooded area you lived, the bigger the problem.

I learned a few things that day.

1) Due to road blockages, you will likely be traveling in areas you are not familiar with. You need maps. Mapping GPS is LOTS better.

And you'll probably have to detour and backtrack a fair amount.

2) Local radio stations are worthless. They did not broadcast any useful information about things I needed to know in my location. You want to know about road closures, bridge closures, problem areas, whatever. Very little of that on the main FM stations.

3) It doesn't take a lot to close down a metropolitan area.

Here are a couple of pictures I snapped from my cell as I drove along. Not very good and there were lots of worse places that I didn't get pictures of since I didn't want to hold things up by gawking. But gives you a bit of the flavor:



Ice/Snow storm.

I can't remember the year, but a while back we had a pretty good ice storm. People abandoned their cars on the freeway and everywhere else.

While there wasn't a lot of damage, basically all transportation in the area came to a halt.

I think my wife said it took her about 8 hours to get home, and she was one of the lucky ones (and she had 4WD and good tires AND chains if she needed them).

Basically, you aren't going anywhere if the streets are impassible. Even if your vehicle can go, it doesn't help you if the street if full of vehicles that can't.

I actually missed the worst of this in Seattle because I was flying in from CA. However, it caused me my own goofy situation because we were delayed by many hours getting out of CA, then we were backed up on the runway in Portland for about 8 hours, then when we finally left Portland, we circled Seattle for about 3 hours.

Then I needed to get home from the Airport in the ice storm. Lucky for me, it was so late that havoc on the roads had died down and it only took me a couple (three?) more hours to get home (I carry chains in my car as well).

These were pretty bad events, but I don't think they were nearly as bad as they could have been. And the windstorm didn't even have heavy rain.

-john

Its not that bad, the crossing is about 30m, I mean its not exactly the Broughty Ferry Dook

Just pack your speedo's and a big dry bag, it will add to the story to tell the grandchildren about how you got home during the big one.

to back up your GPS you might put together a 1:50000 UTM "strip chart" copied on waterproof paper on a couple of alternative routes...my Garmin nuvi 500 has topo map installed, but it is a whold lot easier looking at a real topo map

I'm sure it sounds like complete overkill to some but this is why my Husqvarna chain saw lives in my truck most of the time. Severe thunderstorms, tornadoes or ice can bring down utility poles and trees with surprising regularity around here.

Seems like a good idea to me.

-john

Big One? Heck, you tell 'em that's how you used to get to school every morning when you were their age! And don't forget to mention the chunks of icebergs you had to navigate around, too.