In Case of Emergency... - Columbia,MO

I'm already a bit of a food hoarder with sale items, plus we have both gas and charcoal grills....and my husband is a flashlight and battery hoarder....so we are automatically set. I know I could feed the neighborhood.

Hi,
I live in the gulf south and we will be starting Hurricane season next week.
For emergency kit, to take with, I keep all my original copies of birth certificates, insurance, mortgage, etc. in a large folder. I put the folder into a box with the pets rabies certificates, and "knock out" drops for long evacuation road trips. I actually keep the box in either my living room or my bedroom - easily accessible for grab and go.

Depending on the severity of the storm, we may stay home. So I locate all our flashlights, buy new batteries, stock up on bottled water, canned foods, crackers and peanut butter, and make sure the propane tank for the grill is full.

Since we have 6 months of Hurricane season, I buy things throughout the first 3 months, as the last 3 months are usually the ones with the highest incidence of bad storms. I do have the "luxury" of knowing well in advance if I need to leave or can stay.

My sister lives in Kansas and her tornado kit consists of water, flashlight and cat supplies, 3 days of medicine, usually a change of clothing. Since she does not have a basement, when she hears the sirens she goes across the street to her neighbors. She plans on keeping her kitty carrier, with his supplies in it, by the front door.

Always remember any prescription medications that you or your family members take - try and keep at least 3 days supply on hand at all times.

Good Luck
God Bless

Hi Christie,
Thank you for the reminder to make an emergency kit. All last summer I kept a bag filled with supplies to take to the basement in the event of a tornado.

My kit had water, peanut butter, crackers, juice boxes, fruit snacks (my husband and my kids have type 1 diabetes, so I needed food, first and foremost!), insulin and syringes (now I will need insulin pump supplies in my kit), blankets and a change of clothes for each kid. Wallets and purse went in an accessible spot to grab on the way downstairs.
Radio, flashlights and batteries and cell phones.

I will be getting my kit together tonight. My heart goes out to the people of Missouri who were affected. Minneapolis also had a tornado with fatalities and much damage last night. It's very sobering.

My husband is all about emergency preparedness. Check out http://www.survivallisting.com/. It is a pretty cool site that gives a bunch of tips.

I keep a rotating supply of water in the basement - 6 or 8 gallon jugs and I change them out every couple of months. You can live days without food but not without water. We "can" food so we always have canned fruit, jams, pickles and salsa in the basement too. It would be a good idea to keep some peanut butter or other protein on stash too. Candles and flashlights are stashed throughout the house too. I'm sure we could do more, but we don't have sever weather here very often.

I don't really have an emergency kit per se. I mean, I know where all our important papers are and they are easy to access and load in the car. Same with the back up harddrive for the computer and photo albums/scrapbooks that are important to me.

But we live where tornadic activity is really very limited. The rare occasions when they happen (LOTS of pop up thunderstorm activity down here in the coastal south) they are nothing like what happens out in the midwestern states. They barely register as F1. And usually last seconds, not half hour blocks of time. What we have to worry about is hurricanes. And I don't really have an "emergency" kit for those. We get plenty of warning when we are in the "line of fire" that I'll just load up the car(s) and leave to my parents' or my brother's place. They live 5 hours away further up the coast and inland. There really isn't much sense in stocking up on a lot of stuff that won't be used b/c we've left. And generally speaking, we have a lot of peanut butter and bottled water around. They are big time staples at our house, and I usually have about 3 jars of PB stocked in the cabinet, a couple cases of bottle water in the garage, and about 15 cans of tuna stored under the island. I stock up when they go on sale, and we use them all regularly. We don't have basements in this part of the country, so storing a lot of stuff "for an emergency" is a little tougher to do. We don't have the space to store 3 or 4 rubbermaid tubs full of "just in case". My "just in case" plan involves loading the cars up with irreplaceable items, our dog, our kids and the prescription meds (son and dog)... and driving both vehicles out of here to a safe place. Anything else, we have insurance on and while it would break my heart and scar me for life I'm sure, I can live without it.

don't forget the can opener!! people forget the can opener in their emergency kit!!

I have a Rubbermaid 30 gallon tub filled with MREs, a can opener, first aid kit, wind-up radio that works as a recharger as well as a flash light....scissors, shovel, garbage bags, ax, etc. next to it I have 4 back packs in case we have to travel. I also keep our sleeping bags and a small tent there as well - in case we have to move...

christi, i got bit by the bug last night - tooooo many scary stories, i caved and threw together a "kit" of our own. i didn't put food in it - we don't have much on hand either, plus i figured with tornados food is not too far away, because it's not like a hurricane or snowstorm where you can't get out for days and EVERYONE within two or three states is affected. i put sturdy shoes and clean socks, flashlight with extra batteries, my b/c (any prescriptions i had would have gone in), keys, a clean lovey for my son..and a roll of toilet paper. my first aid kit is a disaster but i took what i could from that too. not much but it made me feel better. i would put it wherever you plan to end up. we don't have a basement so i hung our duffle bag from the shower head because i had planned to head to the bathroom. thank goodness nothing happened here last night. ready for all these storms to end!

My husband is former military, so we have all sorts of things in our stash. We have a metal rack/bookshelf in our basement corner, and this is what's on it: jugs of water (1 per person); candles, flashlights and batteries, knives and a machete, sleeping bags, tent, blankets, canned food items (veggies, fruits, and meal items like chili and spagetti), can opener, bleach (for santizing and sterilizing water), extra outfit per person.

We also have started air sealing common foods, like sugar and flour. These wouldn't be things we'd grab in an emergency, but things we'd want or need if groceries stores were destroyed. Our last thing was vacuuming sealing some extra seeds from our garden. (Again, not for an emergency, but if we needed to start from scratch due to some major area-wide catastrophe.) He has also got a small box with extra bullets for each of his firearms (in case he has to hunt for food).

Some of our friends think we've gone overboard, but my husband has seen terrible things in other countries during his military days, so he would rather be ultra-prepared and never use it. This gives him peace of mind that he could provide for us if there were some major disaster. (And our friends always joke that if something did happen, they'd come find us because they know we could feed them.)