PACK YOUR BAG! Day 16: Anyone shake it up in the Shake-Out?

| Preparedness | West Seattle news

At 10:17 this morning, our state marked Disaster Preparedness Month with the Great Washington Shake-Out earthquake drill. Were you part of it, at work, home, or school? If you were, consider writing a comment below to share how it went and why you did it (required to? wanted to? curious? etc.). Now, on to the next installment of our ongoing “pack your ‘Go Bag’ one day at a time” series – here’s what West Seattle Be Prepared advises this time:

Specialty items this time to mark the special Great Shakeout drill: Put either baby food and diapers or pet food and litter in your kit, enough for 3 days. If you are helping pack for a senior member, think about something unique they must have if evacuated. Women, think about sanitary supplies to add. If nothing above applies to you, you get to skip this turn!

It’s never too late to start getting the “Go Bag” together as a VERY basic step in preparedness. Our previous installments are all archived in reverse-chronological order here.

Scooterista October 18, 2013 (7:57 am)

Tracy, thank you for this series! It is super helpful. I have one question, one which rather haunts me when I think seriously about disaster prep: what if I’m not home? What if I’m in, say, Wallingford when the world comes tumbling down? It’s not realistic for me to duplicate this pack list and keep it in my car. I do keep a pair of old walking shoes and a small amount of emergency supplies in my car, but they are more geared towards waiting out a breakdown. What say your experts?

WSB October 18, 2013 (8:29 am)

Scooter – Cindi from WSBP, our fabulous liaison for this info (who came up with the idea, too – she is one of the group’s devoted volunteers, and I wish I could shout out to the whole lot of them, although for starters I have to mention WSBP website creators Karen and Deb, take time to browse their work at http://westseattlebeprepared.org ), usually checks comments so I hope she will reply.
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As for me (no expert), water is at least the bare minimum – that will keep you alive.

CeeBee October 18, 2013 (8:52 am)

Hi Scooter – that’s a hard one. Everyone does say to keep a kit in your car and at your workplace. But my car doesn’t have a covered trunk, and I don’t want to leave a nice, stuffed backpack as a theft temptation. So I have buried in the wheel well and other parts of the car: sturdy shoes (people in Japan and Christchurch had to walk home), a light coat/rain shell, a cheap polar fleece blanket, a couple of bottles of extra water, a couple of cans of ready to drink soup, several flashlights, granola bars and a small first aid kit in the glove. There’s probably more than that squirreled away in that car, I think I actually get by for 2 days if stuck in it (snowstorm thinking), and I could carry it all in the grocery bags if I have to walk home. I actually have had to eat my stash of food on occasion, so at least it gets rotated. Hope that helps.

T October 18, 2013 (12:14 pm)

I keep my car kit in a clear bag like the ones linens are packaged in when you buy them. I’m hoping that this will keep theives from breaking in for a few emergency essentials. They can clearly see what they would get. So far no problems.

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