After 9/11, when many folks had to walk the length of Manhattan to get out, the number of mountain bikes kept in office buildings increased exponentially. I know several people who keep a bicycle and a small bug-out bag stowed in their buildings mechanical room or storage area.
Cell phone networks go down like a cheerleader on prom night, but text messages often seem to go through...different infrastructure and prioritizing. Something to think about.
And, of course, prior planning is key for this. Especially rendezvous points and communications trees.
One of the things I learned after living in California for a few years, was always be prepared for "The BIG one." This meant keeping things in the trunk of your car (assuming you can always get to your car in the event of a major event) that you normally don’t. Some things you’ve already mentioned: changes of clothing, including good walking shoes, at least a couple of gallons of drinking water, food (non-perishable and easy to open if you don’t have a can opener) a shovel (one of those army surplus fold up ones work really well) any sort of camping gear would possibly come in handy as well, blankets, an extra towel or too. Any other thing you might need in the event of an emergency. You don’t have to have an enormous amount of the things mentioned, but at least try to have enough for yourself. Most people kept everything in a cardboard box of some sort, and referred to it as the “earthquake box.” It’s also wise to keep a cash stash. Maybe not ON you, but somewhere easily accessible in the event that you may need several hundred
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As a side note, I'm so glad to see you around LJ again.
Hurricane Katrina taught us that cash is king in the event of a disaster, meaning that a couple hundred bucks is probably not going to sustain you for a week or longer. You need enough for gas, a hotel room (if available) and whatever miscellaneous things pop up. In New Orleans after the storm, money could buy you a ride out of town. We keep $1000 cash in our gun safe at all times.
While we're at it, here's a biggie: Get some training! CERT training is generally free from your local county teams. It covers disaster awareness, hazmats, evacuate vs shelter-in-place, disaster medicine, triage, damage size-up, rudimentary search-and-rescue, and fire extinguishers. Fairfax County is one evening a week, for 8-9 weeks, plus a one-day final exercise on a weekend.
Oh, that's excellent. I've gone through all of that as part of my agency's training, but obviously not everybody's going to join a police agency to get that training.
It was weird watching on the news various people patting themselves on the back for how well the post earthquake things went. It seems to me if it had been a real major disaster most people would have been pretty well screwed. Another thing though is I think DC has more then the average city's number of commuters, many of whom take various forms of public transit and don't necessarily have anywhere to even keep emergency supplies (depending on their place of work, space available, etc). It's probably something that should be looked into for the future.
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Cell phone networks go down like a cheerleader on prom night, but text messages often seem to go through...different infrastructure and prioritizing. Something to think about.
And, of course, prior planning is key for this. Especially rendezvous points and communications trees.
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As a side note, I'm so glad to see you around LJ again.
Hurricane Katrina taught us that cash is king in the event of a disaster, meaning that a couple hundred bucks is probably not going to sustain you for a week or longer. You need enough for gas, a hotel room (if available) and whatever miscellaneous things pop up. In New Orleans after the storm, money could buy you a ride out of town. We keep $1000 cash in our gun safe at all times.
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Keep your head on that swivel, Jay, and stay safe through the various bullshit coming in.
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Another thing though is I think DC has more then the average city's number of commuters, many of whom take various forms of public transit and don't necessarily have anywhere to even keep emergency supplies (depending on their place of work, space available, etc). It's probably something that should be looked into for the future.
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