Red Cross notes on preparedness

Red Cross "How to Prepare for Emergencies"

This is actually used as an effort to raise money by the Red Cross. It is the "gift" given to inspire reciprocity. It includes a VERY BRIEF survival quiz, which I do not entirely agree with. It could be a good start if you are generally not informed or prepared.

Just throwing it out there to see what people think.

I took the quiz and to my surprise, found that "two weeks of food" is the incorrect answer. Not at all sure about that since many advise , in the light of recent experience that one should be prepared to be self sufficient for more that three days. Makes sense to me.

I'll bet that Montanero (a) had more that three days of food when Florence struck and (b) was glad that he did.

About 3 weeks, for my family and at least one other family, just in case.

IIRC, the question was "how much food and water should be in your evacuation kit" 3 days is IMHO reasonable for an evacuation kit that can be carried.
A much greater supply would be prudent to store at home for any shelter in place emergency. 2 weeks as a minimum in my view, a couple of months would be better.

I have routinely carried up to a week's worth of food on backpacking and climbing excursions and that is a fairly typical limit. For those trips, often light weight chow is at a premium, so the meals aren't always gourmet.

In any kit carried on foot, water will be the really heavy item. It is hard to give a hard and fast rule because water supplies may range from over abundant to totally absent. In desert conditions, I often backpack canned foods instead of freeze dried, if water will be scarce.

One thing about food, it is the one item in your pack that becomes lighter day by day, so you can indulge in a little extra weight at the beginning. Of course, if you are travelling by vehicle, weight limits for food are essentially meaningless. When evacuating, I have always tried to drive or pedal, rather than hike (being prepared to hike, if necessary)

Actually circumstances and environments vary so much that it is hard to develop an absolute rule. But I have a life long habit of eating which I like to indulge.

BOBs and vehicle kit combined would amount to more than 2 weeks of food for my family.

What struck me as notable is that this is the first time I've seen a national preparedness organization do these two things:

1. Distinguish between the amounts of food and water needed for evacuation and for sheltering in place.

2. What used to be the recommended minimum amounts of food and water for sheltering in place is now the amount recommended to take with you if you are evacuating. The sheltering in place amount is . . . almost 5 times what used to be the recommendation. Storing 14 gal.per person per household is a significant amount of storage space and weight. At an average family size of 2.58 people per household, that is 36 gal. of water.

Not that hard to do. I store at least 50 gallons for a household of two. Drinkable water is very likely to be at a premium very soon in a good many emergencies.

Captain Obvious here... just be sure that if your water supply is intended to be part of your evacuation plan, that all members that might be needed to handle a load out can actually lift the water containers... I use two of the civilian (blue) version of the Scepter 20 liter cans, in addition to some much older "aquatainers"... the filled 20 liter containers are 44# each, and much easier to transport with some form of a rolling dolly... I routinely add 2ml of chlorine bleach when they are rotated at the beginning of the tropical storm season...I have a .1 micron family size filter as well as a .1 micron mini... if you use pool shock to pre treat for any virus smaller than .1 micron, a chlorine test strip designed to read in the 0-5 parts per million range, can provide you with a correct size "dipper" to administer the shock to a 5 gallon of suspect water... I use a .22lr casing soldered to a piece of #12 copper wire, trimmed to the correct height...you will need to determine your dipper according to the available chlorine percentage of your shock...