Emergency Supplies

I don't know if anyone else has been motivated by the recent earthquakes in Christchurch or Japan to look at an emergency kit?  I sure have.  We've usually had emergency water to some extent or other around the place, but I realised in Townsville that you are actually meant to replenish it every 6 months.  If you don't, it tastes gross (as we discovered on a camping trip when we decided to use some of our emergency water - yuck!).  The good news is that it won't kill you, it is just that the oxygen levels in it deplete or something I think.  So I now have a reminder in Outlook every six months to replenish the emergency water.  Only I wanted to actually get to 'use' it for something - tipping it down the drain seems so wasteful.  But the weather has been wet lately, and it needed to be moved before the big party, so down the drain most of it had to go.  On the bright side, we have 5 days worth of water now sitting in the shed.  The shed being the least likely to collapse and be unreachable in an earthquake.  The water is in 3litre juice bottles that were washed out first, with dated masking tape labels.  Nothing fancy, and nothing that cost us extra.  I hope to add a container with some basic first aid, batteries, candles and matches, a tin opener, and a few tins of food over the coming weeks.

It concerns me that we are so unprepared for emergencies.  How many of us could live for a week without a trip to the supermarket?  And that's just normal groceries, never mind things like batteries, emergency water, and such. Oh, and toilet paper - I'm going to put a few rolls of that in my emergency kit!  I have been inspired by my mum to persevere with this project.  It is all too easy to put it to the proverbial back burner, and decide that it requires too much money or effort, and hey, it will never happen to us, right?!  But week by week I have been watching as over the past couple of months she has slowly built up a survival kit for her and my dad.  I actually feel relieved, knowing they have one.  I'd like to feel that same satisfaction for my own family.  After all, I did grow up in Wellington (NZ's most 'at risk' city for a big quake), with the weekly earthquake drills and school projects setting up emergency kits at home.  I know what a kit should have.  I have just become a bit lazy and complacent, and allowed myself to forget that I can't predict the future, something big and bad could happen to me and mine, and we will fare so much better if we are at least a little prepared.

Do you have an emergency kit?  Where do you keep it?  What is in it?
Amy