Featured Topic - Long Term Water Storage
Long Term Water Storage and
Why It Is an Important Thing to Have!
The Red Cross, FEMA, your county Emergency Management all say to have a minimum of 2 weeks worth of water and food stored - why do you think that is?
I go to the Washington Emergency Management Conferences. When there is a disaster in WA State, I work at the Emergency Operation Center and then at the JFO (the Joint Field Office where WA State and FEMA are set up to manage the disaster).
What do you suppose is the number one, most important thing at the top of the agenda for all these people during the first few days? Making sure you have water to drink and food in your tummy? Nope. It is finding out where the hardest hit areas are, getting the different agencies all working together, working their fannies off to get an infrastructure set up ASAP so they will be able to provide the help to those who were hardest hit.
The municipalities, the counties, the State and FEMA have to be working together following strict guidelines. The Red Cross jumps in right away, but until all the infrastructure is in place (and FEMA can do the impossible in 3 days when it comes to setting up a base of command in a disaster), only the life threatening cases are going to be taken care of (in a best case scenario).
During that time, you need to be your own rescuer if at all possible. You need to have water and food or you have to go to a Red Cross shelter. With the pandemic threats nowadays, staying away from very populated shelters could be a very good thing.
If something BIG happens like a big storm or big earthquake or big bird flu or big whatever, you are going to be ON YOUR OWN for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. If it was something REALLY BIG, you could be "on your own" for quite a while. They (government officials, emergency management people, police, etc.) only want to know about you if your life is in peril, in which case, all effort would be made to assist you.
If any of the scenarios talked about for the Bird Flu come to pass, they may only be able to remove the dead, for there would be nothing that could be done for those still alive. It’s not that they don’t care about your fate, it’s just logistics and need.
I don’t think most people understand just how "on their own" they would be — it is so easy, so natural to be lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that the fridge is full, that there’s a new movie out, that the gas stations are open, and Safeway and Walmart are just down the street. There may be a few complaints, but on the whole, all is right with the status quo world, right? And who wants to think about being inconvenienced, about having their accustomed comfort zone interrupted? Not many. It’s much easier to ignore the whole thing (or to say you don’t want to create it or draw it to you by thinking about it).
Really, I’m almost to the part where I talk about the long term water storage, I just wanted to say a little about the why of it. Some folks might get the idea that the only people saying you should store water are those who think the world might come to an end in the year 2012 or at the Second Coming (for Christians, New Agers and those that listen to late night radio). Instead I want you to know that some very practical, sensible, level headed professional type people are saying the same thing. And in addition, they are having meetings and conferences to figure out not only what they have to do, but also how to get you, the public, to store water and food and get your family prepared, and maybe even help a neighbor or two to boot. One thing they have figured out is that it isn’t easy to get the public (which is any of us not at their meetings) to prepare themselves to be self reliant for even as short a time as two weeks. God only knows what would happen to us if we had to be self-sufficient for 2 months, 6 months or a year! .....next page