I know this goes without saying… but those with young kids should always have extra diapers and formula–with water if the formula requires it-- on hand. It doesn’t take a Katrina to make it difficult to get to the store.
Oh, and when our kids were young I always had some dry milk on hand. I admit it-- it doesn’t taste like real milk. But in a pinch, I could mix it with a little real milk and stretch my supply. (I never got to where we had to rely completely on it.) A sudden snowstorm with a few inches of snow makes piling the kids into the car onto slippery roads for milk a huge hassle.
My permaculture farming lad knows a ton of these - and edible parts of plants that most of us don’t even consider. At the moment I mostly tell him to “enjoy!” He does. No illnesses or issues as of yet. (I do like purslane in salads and stir fry.) But if we had to, I’d be far more willing to expand my palate. I definitely consider him another asset in our location - as do our neighbors.
Hmm, maybe we need a cc code word - just in case. So many of you have knowledge and talents that could be put to use to assist with our community. We have enough land for food for additional people as long as they pull their own weight in some aspect or another - and don’t have personalities to drive the rest of us crazy. We’re a fun loving bunch… including occasionally getting together for game nights (not everyone at once, but those who can).
There was a house for sale a year and a half ago in our “borders” and some of us might have more or less sifted those looking to see if they would fit in (“sifted” by explaining the neighborhood quite frankly). Even so, we all breathed a sigh of relief when the new owners adapted so well to life here. They even brought young kids the rest of us can enjoy watching play.
What you need depends on where you live. I live in a place where we don’t really deal with floods, tornadoes, wildfires or landslides but we have frequent blizzards and infrequent hurricanes and ice storms. Whereas in some areas people need to be able to bug out on an hour’s notice we’re more likely to have to shelter in place for a number of days.
When I think about a major disaster what comes to mind for my area is the Blizzard of '78 when there was a state of emergency and total driving ban in all of Eastern MA for a week and kids were out of school for 2-3 weeks. It was possible to walk to the local grocery store but many places were closed because they couldn’t get deliveries or workers in. We walked a sled to the store to pick up eggs, bread and milk, all of which were being rationed.
In a blizzard fresh water isn’t much of an issue-just poke your head out the window and scoop up a potfull of snow. What gets tricky is staying warm if the power goes out and keeping the pipes from freezing. Basic sanitation (showers, laundry, etc.) is also a challenge in the cold with no power. Friends whose power was knocked out by a major ice storm years ago didn’t have power for almost 3 weeks.
We play a mental game assessing those we would invite to our mostly self-sufficient out of state farm in a zombie apocalypse. Annoying relative with no real skills? Nope. Good conversationalist friend with doctor husband and good breeding stock kids? C’mon in!
Agree. Know your neighbors. In the big New England snowstorm October 2011, we neighbors banded together. Two folks have larger generators on our street of 14 houses, half of us spent time at one house…the other half winged it.
We ate VERY well…cooked all the defrosted food from our fridges on gas grills, and wood stove. The folks with the generator made coffee every morning, and we had tons of eggs, and made toast, Nd bacon on the grill.
We watched movies and played board games.
There was a schedule for showers.
During the day (thankfully it was sunny) most of us spent some time at our houses…heating the places up with fireplaces and gas heaters.
It’s not something I would want to do everyday, but we sure had a lot of fun! We had no power, Internet or cell phones for five days,we had a landline so everyone could make phone calls if needed.
We couldn’t get off our street for the first three days due to downed trees…but the neighbors used saws and chin saws to clear everyone’s driveways.
Luckily the snow just melted.
We keep a good supply of bottled water, which we used. We have a Coleman stove, and a bunch of solar lanterns.
And plenty of non-perishable foods (canned, and things like peanut butter)
We had a similar experience with hurricane Sandy a few years ago. People with generators hosted people who had no power and our Temple opened its doors so people could hang out in a warm place and recharge batteries, etc. during the day. The local teens volunteered to run programs entertaining the little kids during the day. The Temple also provided lunch and coffee to everyone every day. What is really touching is that they recouped nearly twice what it cost to feed everyone from people making grateful donations in appreciation of the hospitality. It is so wonderful to see everyone pull together like that.
