Are you prepared? Re-evaluating our 72 hour kits

I have asked this question before in a tip or dare. That was over a year ago, and I thought that it was time to revisit the subject!

Living on the Oregon Coast as we do, we are aware of the dangers of Tsunami's and such in our area. We are also overdue for an earthquake off the west coast as well, and since Japan's Tsunami in March the very real possibility of something like that happening here has been in our thoughts.

We have been pretty good about keeping our 72 hour kits, and we even did our own family Tsunami Drill last April to help the kids to be aware of how long it will take to get to our "safe zone". The main thing we learned from that drill was that our kids' packs were a bit on the heavy side, and they were slow getting to where we needed to be.

After what happened in Japan, things around this area have been re-evaluated and we found out that if there is a large earthquake in this area, we will have only fifteen minutes to get to our safe zone. Our house is three feet above sea level, and near a river. If a Tsunami did happen here, the water would first take the path of least resistance, and the rivers would flood. Our safe zone is actually towards the ocean. Crazy I know, but the elevation there is much higher than here, although still below a hundred feet above sea level. Any other direction we could go would mean crossing water and after an earthquake, the bridges and overpasses are not to be relied on, and the roads won't always be driveable either, so towards the ocean we will go, and pray that we are high enough.

Since March my thoughts have been about how long it took us to get the 1.1 miles to our safe zone when we did our drill, and with that in mind we decided to revamp our 72 hour kits and make them lighter. Our original kits had some canned food and such in them that was pretty heavy. Typically we had to switch out the canned food every year to year and half and the food was all pop top style cans so that the kids didn't have to hassle with a can opener. What we have opted with instead is to go with emergency food bars for the bulk of our food. A two day supply of food in that form weighs about the same as one can of ravioli did. The food bars we got are good until the Spring of 2016, so we won't have to worry about rotating it out as often.

I could go into a lot of details on what we got and why we got it, but I am not sure that anyone is that interested in the information, so I am just going to post a couple of pictures and a little bit of info instead. If anyone wants to know more, just ask me! .

This is a picture of one of our kids' basic kits. There is food for three days, along with other emergency items and a couple of things for entertainment (paper and pen, and a matchbox car). When I took the pics we had been planning to put the small cans of apple juice in the bag, but changed our minds about that. Everything fits together, with some room to spare should we decide to add more, into the green bag in the top left corner. The bags are military surplus that I got online, and they are rubberized and although not 100% water tight, they will keep rain and etc out pretty well unless they are submerged.

Here is a shot of the bag all packed. It has everything they need except water. This bag goes into their main backpacks that they carry their 72 hour kits in. Its contents will stay dry and protected. We also know that we won't have to rotate the food in this kit for five years, so even if we forget to rotate some of the other things in their packs, we can feel good knowing they are covered for food and basic warmth and etc.

We also put together a few very basic first aid supplies in a ziplock baggie and included it in the above kit.

Additionally each packpack contains a change of clothes, a couple of bottles of water, some snacks and granola bars, etc. These are the items we will have to be rotating every six months. I feel better knowing that they have three days worth of food in the green bags, and another full day of food as far as calories go in the foods we will rotate. The "grown up" pack also includes a water filter and water purifying tablets, so that we can get additional water if we need to. There are also additional supplies not included in the smaller kits.

Is there more I could do? Sure there is. I feel pretty good though that all the supplies for the kits above costed us around $18 including the purchase of the green bags. The additional water and snacks only amount to a couple dollars more so comparing what we have to the cost of some of the basic kits out there, I think we are doing pretty good. The kids' packs weigh around 8lbs including their water bottles, clothes and packs, and B's probably weighs less than five. We still have a few things to pull together, but all in all I am feeling pretty good about having what we need to survive for four days or more in the case of a natural disaster and evacuation. How about you? Do you have a basic 72 hour kit? I dare you to start one if you don't. Even if you just toss a few cans of food and some water in a backpack or bag, it's a start, and a start can save your life!