Prepping your Family for an Emergency: Simple Steps to Staying Safe during a Disaster

Introduction

There are many books on preparing or prepping for a long-term worldwide disaster such as an EMP blast, nuclear war, or meteor strike. Prepping your family for an emergency is not that type of book, nor is it a Bear Grylls wilderness survival guide. Prepping your family for an emergency is a book for the average family and focuses on what you need to do in a short-term crisis to keep your family safe and fed in your own home. This includes an event such as an extended power outage, pandemic, flood, bushfire, cyclone, hurricane, or any other event that forces your family into self-isolation, lockdown, or short term bunking in.

In 2017 Hurricane Katrina caused widespread damage and loss throughout New Orleans, in 2019 Typhoon Odai killed over 900 people in Africa, and in early 2020 bushfires ravaged Australia and an unexpected pandemic hit the world. Movie theatres, gyms, schools, restaurants, and many other services we take for granted were suddenly shut down. Many countries saw panic buying of goods such as hand sanitizer, toilet paper, rice, pasta, and medical supplies. Shelves were left bare and restrictions were placed on purchases.

Families were forced to quarantine inside their homes, international travel was placed on hold and countries were placed in lockdown as Governments tried to stem the spread of infection.

Many people were unprepared for these disasters and unsure what they needed to keep their homes and families safe. They had to rely on authorities for help and this help was not always immediately available.

Prepping your family for an emergency will provide you with a guideline of what you will need if your family finds themselves confined to home whether it be from a man-made disaster or event such as a prolonged power outage or a natural disaster such as a flood or severe storm.

Easy recipes including hand sanitizer, disinfectant and simple to prepare meals are included at the back of the book, using food and items from your pantry.

Stay safe and remember the prepper’s motto, hope for the best but prepare for the worst!

Suzanne Lowe

Chapter One

What do you need for short-term isolation?

If your family must go into quarantine, or you want to be prepared in case of a lockdown, power failure or natural disaster, there are some things you can easily do without going on a wild spending spree. Some of the foods and items you may already have in your home.

Remember, you can’t prepare for every scenario. Instead prepare for what you see as the greatest threat to your family.

All foods and items suggested can be adjusted to suit your own family’s tastes and size.

Let’s start with a few handy tips:

Purchase what your family likes to eat, and you feel comfortable preparing. If you purchase twenty tins of tomatoes just because they are on sale, however, you hate tomatoes they will only take up space in your home and be a waste of your money.

Be prepared to substitute. You may not have the exact ingredients for a particular meal you want to make, and you won’t be able to pop to the shops to buy it. Instead substitute.

For example, substitute rice instead of pasta or spaghetti, use different beans, vegetables, herbs, and spices. Don’t be afraid to get creative.

Freeze leftovers. When cooking meals for your family, prepare extra and freeze the leftovers. For example, meat or vegetable sauce for pasta, soups, casseroles, and stews all freeze well. Place the leftovers in Ziplock bags and label with the date and contents using a permanent marker. Remove the air from the bags before sealing and lay flat in your freezer. Storing food in smaller serves helps it freeze quickly and means you can defrost only what you need.

Freeze chopped fruit and vegetables. When fresh fruits and vegetables are not available, or you are not able to get to the store, frozen fruit and vegetables are a great alternative for use in cooking.

However, it should be noted that not all fruit and vegetables freeze well, for example, lettuce will become soggy after being frozen. For more information and tips on which vegetables and fruits freeze well, see the chapter How to freeze fruits and vegetables.

Freeze plastic bags or containers of water. These can be used in a cooler/esky to help keep food cold, or for drinking water once thawed. They are also useful for injuries where an icepack is required or to cool the body during hot weather. Simply wrap the frozen water bag in a light cloth before placing on the skin.

Have alternate cooking methods available. When the power goes out, or you are unable to access your usual cooking supplies it is important to have an alternative, safe method available. See the chapter Cooking in a disaster for examples of alternate cooking methods you can use.

Rotate your food supplies. To ensure your food stays fresh and you are not stuck with a whole lot of food past it’s use by date, get into the habit of rotating the food in your pantry, freezer and storage areas. Check your food regularly. When any food supplies are coming close to their use by date, use those first and replace with new stock. Whenever you purchase food, remember, newest to the back, oldest to the front.

Have enough non-perishable food for 3-4 weeks. You will need enough food supplies such as tinned, packaged, dried and preserved food to provide your family with three meals per day for 3-4 weeks.

Don’t forget the furry and feathered members of your household. You will also need to have enough food for any pets you have in the house as well.

Have an emergency cash supply. This doesn’t need to be a large amount of money; however, it is always useful in case you cannot get to the bank, the ATMs are not available, or you need a ready source of money and cannot leave your home.

Have a family emergency plan. Everyone in your family including children should know what to do in case of emergencies. For example, who is picking the children up from school?

Do the older children, teenagers and young adults in your family make their own way back home or will you be picking them up? See the chapter Making a plan of Action for further advice.

Don’t spend too much money on things you won’t use. Unless you are prepping for a doomsday scenario where your family must leave you home and bug out to another location you are not likely to need a GPS tracker or satellite phone. There are a multitude of survivalist items available to purchase, some of them expensive. If you don’t think your family will need them, save your money and purchase items you can use at home such as extra batteries or a camp stove.

Have an adequate water supply.

Ideally have a drinkable water supply for all members of your family including pets for at least three days. See the chapter on How much water do I need? for further advice.

Have an emergency and first aid kit in your home.

Everyone in the family should know where these are located in your house. The appendices at the end of the book give you examples of first aid and family emergency kits.

Have enough of your prescription medicine.

Make sure you have enough supplies of your usual prescription medicines to last at least a month. During and after an emergency such as a flood, cyclone, or hurricane for example, it may take time for pharmacies to restock their supplies. Especially if roads and rail lines are closed.

Chapter Two

Make a Plan of Action

To help your family stay safe, you should have a family plan of action. Everyone in the household needs to be aware of this action plan. You can also include other family members such as grandparents and friends if you wish.

For example, your action plan could include:

Make a list of medical and emergency numbers.

Keep this list in an easily accessible location for all family members to access if needed. The refrigerator or a pin-up board are good places. Your list can also include school and work numbers.

Have a hard copy of your contacts.

Like the medical and emergency numbers it is also a good idea to have a hard copy of your family and friend’s contact numbers somewhere accessible.

Who is most at risk in your family?

For example, older people, pregnant women, and people with underlying health risks such as asthma or diabetes or compromised immune systems may be more at risk.

Speak to your General Practitioner about what extra assistance they might need and how you can minimize any infection. For example, during a pandemic, those at a higher risk may need to eat separately from the family and maintain a distance of 2 meters from other household members.

Where can you isolate if a family member becomes sick or infected?

Identify a room/s you can use to isolate one or more of your family members if they become sick/infected. This area will need to be cleaned regularly to help stop the spread of infection to other family members.

If you have more than one bathroom or toilet in your home, dedicate one of the bathrooms/toilets to the sick members of the family.

Who is picking up the kids?

Emergencies don’t always happen when everyone is together and at home. You should have a pre-agreed plan on who will pick up the children from school/day-care/after school activities in case of a disaster such as an impending cyclone? Do older children and teenagers in the family need to make their own way home or will you come and pick them up?

Are you staying in your home or relocating/bugging out?

Depending upon the particular emergency you are experiencing and its severity you may need to consider whether it is safer to stay in your home or leave for a more secure location. If you decide to leave, make sure you know in advance where you are travelling to and alternate routes to get there.

Chapter Three

Prepare your home for lockdown or isolation.

Cleaning and sanitizing

Get into the habit of washing your hands regularly with soap and water for 20-minutes, especially when you have been out of the house (for example, at work or buying food/ petrol etc. or at the park with your children).

Regularly clean door handles and cupboard knobs, refrigerator handles, oven and microwave doors, computer keyboard and mouse, and television remote controls. These items would be regularly touched by household members.

Family members working away from the home before a lockdown is enforced (for example, health care workers and grocery store attendants) should have a designated area where they can remove shoes and coats when returning home. Spray these with a disinfectant. These family members should also wash their hands thoroughly or use hand sanitizer before coming into contact with other family members.

Purchase enough food and medical supplies for at least three weeks of isolation. (See the Appendices on food and medical supplies for suggestions on what you might need).

Go Local

Plan to use smaller, local supermarkets, ATMs, petrol/gas stations and pharmacies as they will have less people using them as opposed to the larger centres. Make sure you wash your hands thoroughly or use hand sanitizer after using petrol/gas pumps, ATMS, cash machines, touch screens, elevator buttons, shopping trolly handles or escalator handrails.

Limit the number of visitors coming to your home.

Keep the number of people coming into your home who are not your immediate family to a minimum. The fewer number of people you encounter the risk of becoming infected decreases.