What's your areas most likely disaster and how are you prepared?

[Homesteadmom]

One of the things my little private water system (11 parcels sharing a creek) did was to put in a 10000 gallon tank reserve for firefighting use only. I pretty much duplicated that at my own place- I have 2 2500 gallon tanks. Might be just a drop in the bucket but could be a life saver too.
My sister put in a 250 gallon tank for her well, which produces fine, so that if the power went out, she would have alittle reserve too.
It's a relatively cheap way to store a bit- you just need a flat spot with a layer of pea gravel to even it out and a spigot at the bottom. You can fill it from the top and use it for your garden watering once or twice a year to clean it out.

They do make a solar pump for wells. We are thinking of getting one for our place up in the mtns.

 

[enjoy the ride]

I have been thinking about my "pantry" storage of staples and canned goods. It is actually my walk in closet in the bedroom with lots of open shelves.
When I started packaging food, I vacuum packed nut, grains, cearals, powdered milk, etc in canning jars. It has been nagging at me that in an earthquake, all those glass jars would drop off the open shelves and there would be a lot of breakage. I thought to move them to bottom shelves but that will play havoc with getting them in and out regularly as getting stuff out now is sometimes a challange- if I had to sit down on the floor, I might never get up again. I suppose the best thing to do would be make some doors - it just needs time and the will power to do it.
My ideal would be to have a closet that I could access from both sides so I could put new things in one side and use up old on the other. Dreaming on that one.
But how ridiculous would it be to have most of my stuff lying in broken glass when I need it.

 

[sylvie]

Tornados.

How about when a disaster hits while you are away from home?
I took a guided woodland hike recently and the guide said that if a tornado came to get under the largest fallen tree in the vicinity for cover.
Now I look around wherever I am for potential emergency shelter.
The interstates have large culvert pipes at each stream the road crosses. I would take to one of those pretty quick!
The smaller roads have them too, but not as roomy, LOL.

 

[lupinfarm]

I would say Snow storms, like Pat said, but we're in South Eastern Ontario (err kind of north of South Eastern? LOL). We're not really prepared to be honest, our heat wouldn't come on, but we have the propane fireplace in the extension (Master bedroom) and in a pinch we could all bunk in there with the fireplace, which throws a lot of heat.

We're installing a woodburner next year, so we'll have that to keep us warm.

 

[makerofstuff]

In Colorado we are blizzard, wind, and tornados... then fire and hail. We can get golf ball or bigger hail here. So there are some standard stuff to keep around in case of natural disaster. I can't wait till I have it all put together to get out of the city and onto some land where I can feel more secure as to my plans. Here you really have to focus on being armed in case someone thinks that they need what you have. The idea of dealing with that has me wondering what I would do to handle it. Best offense is a good defense?

 

[dacjohns]

I don't think I have posted on this thread but I will make a real quick post because I have something I don't remember being discussed before.

I am on the northern edge of an extremely bad winter storm that just hit the Midwest, especially Kentucky.

One of the things that has occurred is with power and other utility loss the ability to use credit cards has been lost. Many places were open but only cash was being accepted.

So, have cash on hand.

 

[Beekissed]

No checks? Around here, they don't accept credit or debit cards in some of the businesses....like the brand new movie theatre! Can you believe it? The first time we went there and they told me that, I went and looked out the front door for the "one horse"!

 

[lupinfarm]

omg LOL no one around here accepts personal cheques anymore. maybe the feed store but that's about it.

 

[Beekissed]

That's what I don't understand around here....they will definitely take a check, but they won't take a debit card or credit card~where they will be sure to get the money!

The thing is, they don't like to pay the money for the card reader machine, nor do they like paying the fee for each transaction. Some of them will not let you use a debit or credit unless you are buying more than $10 worth of merchandise/gas.

 

[curly_kate]

I would guess that around here, our most likely disaster would be a flood. We're very close to the Ohio River, and a large creek that feeds into it runs across the street. Luckily, we're up on a hill, so it would take a flood of Noah's proportions to get to our house, but we could easily be stranded here.

I do remember being in high school, doing earthquake drills where we crouched under those flimsy school desks (so if something fell on you, you would get smashed by it AND the desk!). I think that if the New Madrid fault goes, we could be fairly hard hit by it.

Anyway, we are building our store of food. DH bought these 'emergency food kits' with 2 weeks of freeze dried crap in it, but I'd rather eat real food as long as possible. When we empty a milk carton, I rinse them out & refill them with water, and stow that away. We don't have enough to make too much of a difference, but every little bit helps. We definitely need a non-electric heating source. The farm store out here has got a bunch of wood stoves on sale, so I'm trying to get DH to go out & look at them. So we still have a ways to go, but I'd put money on our being more prepared than ANYbody we know.

And we do have cash stowed away at the house, too.