With the deep freeze going on east of us, I can’t help but think, “Is my family prepared if this happened here at home?”
If we were suddenly with out power, how long are we really prepared for if the power is out for more than a few hours?
Do we have enough food and water? Will we be able to stay warm?
My husband and I could manage, but now we have a 4 yo and a 1 yo to look after, so having enough food, water and warm clothes is essential.
Did you know that you should be prepared for 72 hours? It could take this long for emergency responders to get to you. Follow this link for more information about being prepared.
I am planning on putting together a “tote” chock full of the essentials that we would require to survive for a week in the event of a serious catastrophe.
I’ve poked around the internet and there are kits that you can purchase from companies like: Beesafe Solutions, 72 Hours, Costco, or you could build your own with this list provided by the Canadian Red Cross.
Beesafe Solutions has generously provided an Emergency Kit to give away to one lucky reader. Please enter via the Rafflecopter link below. The giveaway will run January 1st – 7th, 2014.
Raincity Parent 
I’m somewhat prepared. I have warm blankets in all the rooms in the house and we have loads of canned goods in the cupboards, along with a bunch of firewood. The flashlights all have batteries and are easy to find… but I don’t know if we’d be able to make it a week!
LikeLike
Definitely not as prepared as we should be!
LikeLike
The city of coquitlam puts on an emergency preparedness class with good tips for your kits and what to do in an emergency, like to map out an evacuation route for your family as some main roads will be closed except for emergency personnel during a disaster.
LikeLike
Part of my new years plan is to put together a kit like this for my family (hubby, 10 month old baby, 2 dogs and me). Thanks for the info!!
LikeLike
I definitely need to be more prepared. Good info!
LikeLike
I am not as prepared as I could be.
LikeLike
We moved to a northern community in Ontario just over 6 months ago and last year this community lost power for 3 days, when we moved here I thought, like that happens often until this fall when a big plane crashed very close to our home just off the highway, instantly after it had gone down we lost power. We didn’t know right that minute it had been an airline that had gone down. We phoned hydro one and they said they ha a conflicting report of a truck crash or plane crash. I thought, no way could it be a plane crash, that’s crazy! Sure enough 5 minutes later we confirmed it was a plane crash, we knew no details whatsoever except my fiancé tried to take our one way out (our highway) to the next community over to grab a generator from his work and it was closed… We knew something bad had happened when it shut our highway down….
It was close to midnight and we still had no power, thankfully we were able to get a generator from his work through accessing a back road that isn’t really a road but made do. Temperatures right than were not as cold as they had been in previous years (-15/-20) but your house gets pretty cold without any heat. As we were crawling into bed, I checked our local online news and learned that 7 people were on board the plane and it crashed beside the highway, 5 of those people were said to have died. My heart sank and I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night.
We woke up in the morning and still had no power, we learned that 3 of those people on the plane were from our town. Of course being a town of 5,000 almost everyone knows everyone or knows of them. We learned we might have power that afternoon.
In total, we had lost power for a day and a half. We were lucky to be able to borrow a generator but had we not, it would have been really cold! Soon after that, we went and bought a generator and realized how important it is to have.
When living in Vancouver, we never thought of having one but after the ice storm that hit the east, we probably would have went and bought a generator as well along with enough supplies for at least a week extra I the cupboards. Here we do more or less as we know that if the highway gets shut down we don’t have a way out depending where it is shut down. In the winter around now, we have an ice road which can get us around the highway to the main town.
LikeLike
Definitely not as prepared as we should be.
LikeLike
So scary to think of how unprepared most of us are!
LikeLike
Definitely not prepared enough. Water is the one thing we always make sure to have.
LikeLike
I would say I’m semi-prepared. I am low on water supplies, so that’s likely something that needs to be focused on, along with batteries for flashlights (somehow half of them died in the last month). Oddly, I think one thing in our favour is that we don’t have a vehicle, so if something happens when we are away from home, we will be good to walk home.
LikeLike
I am definitely not as prepared as I would like to be.
LikeLike
I am not.. I have an emergency kit half prepared this reminds me to finish that 🙂
LikeLike