Emergency Preparedness
In 2020 we found ourselves going from enjoying a usual morning in the garden to fleeing for our lives from a wildfire storm in the matter of an hour.
I’d like to share with you what we had prepared for that made the following days easier to manage, and what we learned from the event that we would do differently if such a thing should happen again.
First of all, strike from your mind the thinking “that could never happen to us”, as with climate change what was once normal and possible has been tossed upside down. We too once thought because we lived in town surrounded by highways and open lands we would never face a wildfire, those happened in the forest, not in town. Fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, heat waves, winter storms and so on, natural disasters come in many forms and are happening with more and more ferocity.
If you have pets, have you considered how you will handle events like evacuations or sheltering in place with them? What preparations you need to make to do so? Have you thought about what an evacuation with them would look like? What would you take? Where would you go?
Our local threats are primarily wildfires and earth quakes. Though heat waves and winter storms are also a consideration. So I keep evacuation supplies on the ready and also shelter in place supplies.
Here is what I know that you don’t know until you experience an event like this: your brain will struggle to make simple decisions once your body and mind switches into fight or flight mode. Simple things like deciding what you need to bring if you only have 15 minutes to pack will scramble your brain instantly. Because your brain will not want to accept that this is actually happening. I clearly remember standing in my doorway thinking “what else should I grab” and at the time my head was completely blank, after I could think of a dozen things I could have grabbed on my way out the door. What made it into the car was what was in my evacuation kit. So now I have lists: what to bring if I have to leave immediately, what to bring if I have more time to pack, listed in order of importance.
What we did right:
I had my cat carriers easily available and ready to go and had worked with the cats on being easy to load on my own.
I loaded the cats into their carriers first thing so I knew no matter what they were ready to go.
I had a tote with a weeks supply of cat & dog food and water.
I had a portable fire safe that contained our passports, important papers, valuables that was easy to grab and ready to go.
I had a portable file box that had all of our important papers: home owners insurance, etc.
I had my cameras & laptops all in one place and easy to grab.
I had all of those things in one area of our house so when it came time I didn’t have to run around looking for stuff, I knew where it all was.
We left as early as possible to get ahead of the worst of the traffic.
We knew where we would go.
We contacted one family member and asked them to contact everyone else to let them know we had gotten out.
We checked in on all our neighbors that were home to make sure everyone was able to get out.
The moment we knew our home had been destroyed we contacted our insurance company and got things going before they were flooded with claims.
What we learned:
We did not really understand our home owners insurance policy and what all it covered, we learned later that for only a couple hundreds dollars a year we could have opted for a 2 year recovery plan instead of 1 year. In the case of a natural disaster 1 year is pretty unrealistic unless you have the best builder ever as a friend like we did that moved heaven and earth to get our home built in 6 months in the middle of a disaster. All the infrastructure of the town had to be replaced and we had to wait 6 months to even get going with the permit process. You need 2 years!
We did not have a complete home inventory list so had to rely on memory and photos to catalog everything we lost, which was grueling and very emotionally triggering. We did not understand that though our policy said we were covered to a certain amount that we would have to show them the inventory of what we lost to collect those funds.
We were lucky that our agent had helped us have a pretty good policy despite our lack of understanding as we made out a lot better than many of our neighbors. For example we had a replacement cost policy that bumped our payout over our maximums due to the fact the costs had risen so drastically with covid and material shortages, so those extra costs were covered. Many of our neighbors that did not have that coverage ended up having to take out building loans to cover the extra costs.
Everyone kept telling us “don’t worry, this is what Fema is for, you will be taken care of”, nope. We did not get a penny from the government even though we lost everything. Not a cent. We spent hours and hours knee deep in paperwork but everything was denied. If you are ever looking to support national charities that do help: Red Cross and United Way were the most available and easiest to get help from.
You need multiple plans on where you will go. The entire routes south were out, luckily we were able to go to our friends to our west, but there were no roads open to go south at all so I learned we need places to go in multiple directions incase the place I planned to go was inaccessible.
If your plan involves hotels, have the # on the ready and reserve immediately. Our neighbors ended up sleeping in their car because all the hotels that took pets were booked up immediately within a 3 hour drive.
Have some clothes packed. I was lucky that we had taken a trip the weekend before to the beach and I had not yet pulled my duffle bag out of the car, otherwise I would have only had the clothes on my back, so at least I had a change of underwear! Michael had only the clothes he was wearing until we were able to get to a store later.
Be prepared for things to shut down! Our car was almost out of gas, luckily we were able to stop on our way out, but a short time later the county sheriff issued a stay at home order and everything shut down so they could keep the roads open for emergency services. Thankfully our friends we evacuated to took us in and fed us and had everything else we needed that we did not have. This taught me that 1/2 a tank is empty and this time of year I keep my gas tank full!
You have to be stronger than you ever imagined you would have to be. The insurance companies, the mortgage companies, landlords for rentals, working, rebuilding… the world keeps spinning even if yours has just blown up, and somehow you are expected to make so many decisions and ford all this red tape, don’t expect that to be made easy for you. It’s not. The people helping you are at work, even if they are good at what they do, they are still at work and have a job to do even if your world is upside down, do not expect them to understand what you are experiencing.
Lists! Lists! Lists! Keep lists ready to take over when your brain gets fried by fight or flight instincts and fear.
Immediate evacuation lists
Packing lists for evacuation with notice
Packing lists for be ready notices (the longer warning you have the more you can move to safety, don’t wait to get the things that matter most to you out)
Lists of accounts and numbers you need after! Have your insurance information easy to find!
Home inventory! At minimum video everything in your house!
What’s in our emergency kit:
Cat carriers, lined with potty pads, always kept in the same place ready to grab & go
Dog leashes & harnesses - including slip leads near every door
Dog booties
Food and water bowls
Disposable cat litter boxes
3 days food for all of us
3 days water supply for all of us
N95 masks, goggle and leather work gloves
Jeans, long sleeve shirts & boots
headlamps & flashlights
Power bank
Garmin Inreach
glow sticks
Change of clothes
Toiletries (travel toothbrush, tooth paste, soap, etc)
first aid kit
File box with all our important papers
Emergency lists- important phone numbers, places we can go, lists of things to take with us if we have time
For sheltering in place we also have an additional 2 weeks supply of food and water, fuel for our camp stove.
The great thing for us is since we camp, hike and backpack we generally have on hand everything we need, and we are able to keep rotating things as we use & replace the food and fuel.
