Emergency Lessons – Don’t Wait

This article is one of a series of posts that emerged due to the 2017 wildfires that ravaged California wine country near our home.

Emergencies don’t wait for you to be prepared before they spring up. They have their own schedule. So it’s important to start your preparation process early. Right now happens to be a good time.

I’ll offer myself up as an example of not following my own advice. Today is October 8, 2019 and our utility (PG&E) has informed most of Sonoma County and much of the North Bay that they will cut electricity to upwards of 800,000 people just on the chance that high winds will trigger another fire storm like we experienced in 2017.

Yes, we have an emergency bag. Yes, we have some emergency water. Do we have enough working flashlights? Ummm…. no as it turns out. What I thought was my go to flashlight simply doesn’t work even with 4 good AA batteries in it. We have 1 flashlight that takes D batteries and two that take C batteries. How many of those batteries do we have? Not enough. I was able to scrounge a couple of lights together, so we’ll be OK, but this was done with the electricity still on and lots of warning. Technically, this is not an emergency. It’s merely an annoyance.

In a real emergency the lights would be out before you knew what hit you. In the dark, can you find your emergency flashlights and be sure they will work? If the answer is no, then you are not prepared. Don’t forget all of the other stuff that should be in your emergency go bag.

Just a few moments ago I ordered a couple of new flashlights from Amazon that just so happen to use the many batteries we do have around the house. These won’t help with tonight’s blackout, should it come. But at least I’m starting to take my own advice; there’s no time like the present to prepare for the next emergency.