When the great calamity comes, I’ll be ready.
When the buildings crumble, the roads heave and the bridges wash away, the power fails and the high-speed Internet won’t connect, I’ve got my ducks in a row.
Certainly, there are many others better prepared than me, but I’ve no doubt there are many, many more who are less so.
Today, I seldom leave my home without supplies to keep me warm, dry and fed for a minimum of three or four days. A bunch of firewood permanently jostles around under the canopy, along with a shovel. A short year or two ago the opposite was true.
Like the vast majority of folks, emergency preparedness was the furthest thing from my mind, given about the same priority a 20-year-old assigns to planning for retirement.
Sure, in the pages of papers I’ve written for and edited, I called for ‘planning ahead’, but when it came to putting advocacy into action, my rhetoric fell sadly empty.
The only extra water I kept stored at home was in the hot water tank. First Aid supplies? Food? Fire? Extra clothing?
Nope. None of the above.
Like most people, I knew the importance of preparing for the worst. That we live in an active earthquake zone and right on top of a major faultline, but it all seemed so ... far away.
No longer. The recent spate of major earthquakes all over the world has hopefully shaken the general populace from its complacency, with the 8.9-magnitude Japan disaster as the kick needed to get their act (and emergency kits) together.
For me, it took joining an organization dedicated to being prepared and helping others who find themselves unprepared for certain situations in the outdoors.
Since I joined search and rescue – in Ladysmith and Cowichan – my 24-hour ready pack (which contains everything I need to survive at least a day or three in the bush), along with a bag of appropriate outdoor clothes and boots to change into for a search, goes nearly everywhere I do.
As a side benefit, I’m almost always ready for a major disaster, such as the earthquake we’re long overdue to experience. But I’ve also stepped up my supplies at home.
There’s now water stored in various jugs in the basement, as well as in the garden shed (because it’s highly likely my basement will be full of the matchstick remains of my seismically unsound, almost 100-year-old house), my camping gear is readily accessible (amidst a jumble of yard implements) in the same shed and I’ve got extra batteries as well as a windup radio to listen in on any emergency broadcasts that might make it to the airwaves.
But mostly, it’s my SAR gear, stuffed inside a 45-litre backpack, to which I feel most tied, so much so that I actually get nervous leaving it behind.
Partially, that anxiety stems from the fact I work a half-hour drive, not to mention several sizable rivers, away from the supplies stored at my home. When disaster strikes, the odds are the route home will be impassable – I’ll be living out of my truck.
I’m hardly living in fear of the Big One, and neither should others, if they’ve got a plan for themselves and their loved ones, and emergency supplies at the ready.
Japan is the perhaps the most prepared country on Earth, and its response – contrary to what much of the hysterical western media has portrayed (for more, read Crawford Killian’s analysis ‘Shaky coverage in Japan’ on The Tyee website) – has been careful and relatively calm, because people were aware and ready.
It’s still been devastating, but without taking the relatively simple steps to get prepared, the outcome really could be calamity.
To learn more about what we can expect in an earthquake and how to prepare, attend a forum March 31 from 7-9 p.m. at the Vancouver Island Conference Centre.