As you know, I recently hosted a contest here on Workerette that hits pretty close to my heart: it's a way for folks to get their families prepared for the worst, while hoping for the best.Having lived across the Southeastern US and in several parts of Germany, as well as the Northwest and now California, I think I can truthfully say I've run the gamut when it comes to potential disasters to be ready for! When we were down south, it was hurricanes; in Germany (then West Germany) during the Cold War era, it was bomb threats and terrorist activity; in the Northwest it was winter storms and earthquakes - and of course here in California, there's plenty to be concerned about.
In the past I've even written articles about emergency preparedness, both for the general population and for small business owners. With everything going on in the world lately, I've been meaning to update our emergency kits (aka BOBs - Bug Out Bags - or "oh sh*t kits", as my Ma calls 'em). My recent comment on my other blog about working on an emergency prep piece for the summer edition of Seasons at Home led to an interesting offer: the opportunity to blog about the WE Prepare program sponsored by the CaliforniaVolunteers organization. I was even offered one of the disaster preparedness kits being offered up in the contests. YEEHAW. Count me in!
So the first thing I did was check out the family plan and children's book being offered on the CaliforniaVolunteers website.
This is a lot more than just an emergency contact list, folks. It's a big hurkin' .pdf that allows you to fill out all of the information for adults and children in your household, as well as emergency contact cards, off-site meeting plans (both local and regional), and letters for your children's schools, caregivers, or other important people. The customizable children's book is a fun idea, but not completely necessary for our family. Most important to me was the ability to save all the information in the file so I can email it to the appropriate out-of-state contacts; this is way nicer and easier than creating my own Word file as I used to do! My one wish is that the fields for the states were left open so people from other states could easily customize this file if their state doesn't offer something similar. Ah well, a little correction fluid should work just as well. And of course if your kids are over the age where the book is handy, you can just fill out what you want and then print only those pages in Adobe. (This also led into me updating my Adobe Acrobat Reader - finally. I've been procrastinating about doing that for months.)
Another asset on the CaliforniaVolunteers site that I really like is the quick and easy risk assessment page. I have always known that there are areas in which we need to improve our family's preparedness efforts; this really helped me see at a glance where those improvements lie. Love, love, LOVE it.
Whether you're in CA or not, the disaster preparedness resources page is SUPER handy. Only three of the links are California-specific; the others are federal-level programs and two of them are specifically for children. If you are a homeschooling family, I can see where this page alone could lead you into a whole unit study on preparedness, but NO FAMILY should be without these resources.
I strongly encourage all of my readers to at least check out risk assessment and resource pages listed above. No matter where you live, having these links at your fingertips will enable you to get started on your own journey to being better prepared for the worst. It behooves every citizen to be as prepared as possible in the face of potential natural and man-made disasters. As we've seen with the recent cyclone in Myanmar, earthquakes in the Midwest of the USA, and the on-going battles in the Middle East, and the continued rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina from two years back - any one of our families can be struck with some sort of disaster at any time, in any place. We don't need to be paranoid, but we do need to BE PREPARED.
It does not serve us well to sit on our soft rumps and wait for the cavalry to come when we can instead spend our time making sure our family is covered; being prepared means we are then better able to serve our community and our country in times of need, rather than waiting for the cavalry to come save us! Join me, please, on a pathway of preparedness. Everyone has room to improve - I know I do. And if you're a SoCal resident, PLEASE head over to my Momma (and More) blog and enter the contest for a FREE disaster preparedness kit. I'd love, love, LOVE to see all three of these kits go out to families who can make good use of them, just like the ones from the Workerette contest recently did!
Saw this post and had to tell you I got my kit delivered the other day. Pretty nice. The kids loved going through it and having the various parts explained. It's with the rest of our disaster supplies now.
Posted by: Stephanie | May 11, 2008 7:01 PM | Permalink to Comment