Just a few minutes ago I was on the phone with my wife and heard rumblimg upstairs that I thought was my daughter moving furniture. It got worse and the whole house shook so bad the fridge started to dance litterly. 4.6 earthquake in a town about 40 min from my house.

Told my wife to hurry home. All is good for now, no cell phone calls but we can text.

Lessons learned.

1) my wife has such an "aw, its nothing" attitude that quickly set me off. Every point I made about prepardness and my experiences with past earthquakes was countered with a dismissing attitude. Lesson is when your SHTF instincts kick in be prepared to deal with family members that are NOT on the same page as you are.

2) Water. Had some empty milk jugs and filled them ASAP for toilet flushing or washing...non potable. Made me realize how lacking my water cache is. Lesson is get your H2O going folks.

3)Disorentation. Whats the right thing to do with my BOBs, food supplies, EDC bags, weapons and supplies thats scattered all throughout the house?

4) Cars/fuel. my Rav4 is in the shop and my ranger is on less than 1/4 tank. I know I know

5) Cell phones inop. NO calls but texting was still good. Scary that I couldnt check in with elderly parents at all.

6) Emergency brodcast station. NOTHING on tv or radio about this incident. BTW, have several am/fm/shjortwave NOAA radios that were eaisiably accessible...good planning on my part.

7) Neighbors came out into the street to communicatge. A good indicator of the poitential for establishing alliences, leadership and other emergency actions to take care of those in need. This was a mild event but a good trainer for SHTF scenerios.

Stuff happens so fast and unexpectedly. What if my house crumbled? My daughter upstairs and the wife on the road in the car. If fire broke out or ? you have practacally no time to act. One thing I learned in the military was when it gets crazy you will automatically go into auto pilot and revert to your training. Suppose that running practice drills would be a big help. At least a basic first reaction checklist. Personally my family wouldnt take anything more than stocking up on supplies seriously and getting them to comply with a bug out safety exercise would be like hearding kittens.

Hope something I posted will help someone.

Pooly

PS empty boxes to load supplies from shelves to cars would help.