CERT certainly opened my eyes to the issues of injuries after a local disaster, especially the fact that we're essentially on our own for 24-96 hours. Imagine putting up your neighbors in your house for 5 days (my aunt says fish and house guests start to smell after 3 days, under the best circumstances); now imagine that they have compound fractures, skull fractures, lacerations, crush injuries, and round the clock medical needs. Nasty. CERT doesn't really give you many tools to cope with all that, but at least tells you what may happen - its up to you to take Wilderness First Aid and any other training that can begin to prepare you to provide medical care for that first 72 hours.

The other items on Pete's list are all valid - if you have pets, make sure you have a supply of pet food, first aid and other necessaries for them. In other words, keep at least a week's supply in inventory and circulate through that. Food, water, toilets - all can be covered ahead of time, if you make the commitment.

It all requires some forethought and preparations for sure, but its not so daunting once you start to think things through, and if you're lucky, organize some of your neighbors to do the same. And there's one advantage, if you are doing the planning, maybe you can plan NOT to host the neighborhood morgue in your garage. Hope for a better spot than that.