I have seen and experienced enough events in my life to be
one of the people who thinks disaster will only happen to other people but me.
To be frank, I am just an average Joe
who love a cup of joe in the morning, noon , afternoon and night ( &*# !! .. sounds like l am having Joe’s addiction and more story about a cup of
joe in the future .. if I ever find the time to write it) and greasy chicken and
steak for dinner. I could continue to lead my life as like other “non-prepared”
public and hope for the govt agencies , marines , army , FEMA and etc to come
to help during the crisis . I can happily send my kids to school, go to work, hope for my wife to have pleasant trip to her favorite K-Mart and pretend to believe that our country will take care of us .. well , ignorance is a bliss.
The lack of knowlege to a situation. Usually once the whole truth is revealed you realize you were happier being clueless..
In the aftermath of Katrina Hurricane it took the marines multiple days to reach
New Orleans superdome. At that time I was thinking to myself, what has happened to my country, we should be better than the rest of the world. as we all have seen and heard on News, the images from dome were disturbing and
the reality was even more dire. Deaths from thirst, exhaustion, and violence,
days after the storm had passed were well documented
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| Survivor at Super Dome |
The Japan Tsunami was a huge disaster, I think a lot of people we caught off-guard as well, but did we see similar situation to Superdome in Japan. Apparently not , the news headline on The Examiner was .. "The is no looting in Japan"
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| Survivor Lining up to get food |
It did not take an expert to point out that in both scenario, survivors suffers equally a lot from the disaster, but their behavior after the disaster were completely different. We need to understand the culture and community at the place where we lived. The community could be our greatest asset and could also be our greatest threat during the crisis. The difference in cultural value means that the disaster preparedness checklist need to be personalized. You can't use the checklist that is drawn by others since they live in different region with different community dynamics.
You can find millions of wesite out there dedicating to disaster preparedness checklist, what to do before the disaster and how to horde food and how to behave during the disaster aftermath . I am not interested to proliferate their views, at the same time I am trying to present a different perspective to preparing for disaster. It is entirely based on my experience , observation and research on events that happen to all of us. Sorry to say that I am not in the liberty to discuss my specific experience due to limitation imposed by my previous employer.
My personal disaster preparedness checklist are as below. The list is drawn specifically for me, but I am sharing it with everyone with the hope that this could inspire your own checklist
- Mental preparation
- Essential food preparation
- Water source
- Currency for trade - not $
- Tools - hardware for survival
- Energy and Power
- Security and defense arrangement - personal and community
- Communication
- Survival guide for digital data
- Medium term food supply
- Evacuation action plan : in the scenario of serious environmental contamination
- First Aid knowledge
I am going to blog more about these topics and others in the future. In the mean time, you are more than welcomed to leave comments, at least I know someone is reading.
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