Listening to Katrina

I found a great website, called Listening to Katrina, that has changed my perspective about preparing for emergencies and emergency kits. The site author describes it as a blog, but it is more of an extended essay describing his evacuation from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and what that experience has taught him about preparing for emergencies.

One thing that he mentions in there is that if you need to suddenly leave your home and set up shop in another town or another state, you need to be financially prepared. Not just having some cash tucked away for the road, but being able to access you financial accounts, proving who you are, proving your qualifications to work in your field. I am a liscensed physician in Ohio, but if I had to evacuate into Michigan or Indiana, it could be months before I could work there, IF I had all of my paperwork in order.

The other big brain shift I had reading this article was that I was not prepared to suddenly evacuate my house in the event of a fire. I can live out of my basement for a few weeks in the event of a blizzard, but if I woke up to the fire alarm, I'd get everyone out of the house with very little clothes and watch everything go up in flames. I need to have personal information scanned onto a memory stick and a set of clothes, flashlights and an emergency cellphone in a bag under my bed that I can grab on the way out.

He breaks evacuation strategies into leaving in under 1 minute (i.e. house on fire), leaving in a hour (i.e. wildfire approaching the house), leaving in 12 hours (i.e. hurricane approaching the region), and staying in place. He also chronicles his efforts to put his family's life back together after being suddenly relocated to Texas. Worth a read and it will influence future blog posts here.