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Health Ideas Living Abroad

What Are Your Emergency Essentials?

These are only the low hanging fruit of emergency essentials.

Suppose you needed to abandon your home because of something like a tornado or a hurricane. What would you take?

Earlier this month we had two potential hurricanes that where approaching our coast of Mexico. It turned out to be a non event; we just got some light rains.

But I still prepared for it. There is a lot of stuff you could do and most people won’t. But there are some emergency essentials that are easy to get together and to keep stashed out-of-the-way until you need them.

Like most people I don’t keep extra gasoline around, so I made sure the car had a full tank of gas. Why not avoid long lines and save time if an evacuation is called for? It’s the same thing for water so I bought some extra jugs of water.

Here’re the emergency essentials I keep handy inside a plastic pail with a watertight lid:

A radio/flashlight unit that runs on batteries or can be hand cranked and some fresh batteries – duck tape – a lighter – a small pot with a lid – half liter water bottle – small first aid kit with booklet – a box of disposable syringes w/ needles – a bar of soap – iodine drops – and a leatherman multi-tool.

Pretty self-explanatory except maybe for: the syringes – in case a medical team is out and I need a shot and iodine drops – for disinfecting water.

These are only the low hanging fruit of emergency essentials. If you assemble this stuff once ahead of time, and without any pressure of impending doom, it’s easy and maybe even a fun project. And then you can forget about it and hope you never need it.