Emergency Preparedness
Nobody wants to think about the possibility of a natural disaster or major weather event suddenly striking your home, but speaking from experience I know that it can happen without warning and within minutes you may find yourself needing to flee your home. Though you may think you do not live in a place where fires can occur, look around the world, they are happening in places that have never faced wildfires. And it is not only fires that can happen, floods, tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes and so on are happening more and more and in new places.
Nowhere is free of risk of all things, especially in our changing climate where things keep becoming more extreme. It’s hard to think about without just getting majorly depressed and shut down, so this post is not about doing that, but rather to prompt you to ask yourself am I prepared? Do we have ready what we need? Do we have a plan on what we take and where we go?
The devastation in Maui is horrific and once again we hear: “we had no warning" “there were no sirens, no officials telling us to go”,” no one to help us leave”, “no officials telling us where to go or what to do”. I know I had this faith before our fire three years ago that living in a town we were safe and there would of course be first responders telling us to leave, telling us where to go. But that’s not always the case, that’s not what happens in a massive event, because those people are at the front lines of the fire doing their best to help, they are not directing traffic, patrolling neighborhoods telling you to go, they are fighting to save who and what they can in the direct path of the event if they can. So all that to say, in a massive natural event it is up to you and only you to know when to leave, where to go and how to get there. And as dog caretakers it is on us to know how to get our pets to safety and be prepared to be able to do that.
I am attaching the checklists I made and shared when we had a live zoom about this.
MY BIGGEST POINTS I WANT YOU TO THINK ABOUT:
If you have pets and kids GO EARLY, you can always come back if it was unnecessary to go, but don’t get stuck in the back of the traffic jam trying to leave.
Know where you will go, and have multiple options incase you cannot get to one of them. We have evacuation meet up spots to our north, west & south in the event we need to go and are not together during the evacuation.
Connect to some neighbors and have a plan incase you are not able to get home, can someone get your pets for you and bring them to safety?
Use those lists in the PDF to plan what you will bring, it is VERY hard to think during an event when you mind goes into fight or flight, so plan those things ahead of time so you can just follow a list.
Always keep on hand at least a week’s pet food supply and a gallon of water per pet.
Try to keep your car’s gas tank above 1/2 a tank, especially if you live somewhere that has a disaster season, keep your cars ready to go.