One Thing Wednesday: Build a Kit

DEM Blogger

November 4, 2015

The Do 1 Thing site won the Awareness to Action category of FEMA’s 2014 Individual and Community Preparedness Awards. It’s a 12-month program of small steps that you can take to increase your personal and household preparedness. Throughout 2015, DEM will feature Do 1 Thing items during our weekly blog post series of One Thing Wednesdays. Check back here every week for a new preparedness activity or tip!

We’ve talked a lot about skills and knowledge, but physical tools are also an important part of preparedness. Our theme for November is supplies: the consumable items and substances that help turn a disaster into an adventure.

The core of your material preparations is your household emergency kit. Our regular pages feature some basic principles for assembling a kit, as well as specific advice for vehicle kits, kits for emergency pet care, and even kits for college dorms. Whatever the location or purpose for which you’re building a kit, be sure you know how to use everything you put into it.

Particularly for your home kit, consider packing the true essentials in a “go bag” – an easy-to-carry container that you can grab on the way out the door if you have to leave in a hurry. The heavier, bulkier supplies intended for disaster cleanup or a long-term stay at home without power can live in totes or storage tubs. Anything you’d want if you had to flee should go in something you can carry easily.

The same consideration applies to your vehicle kit, though you should abandon your vehicle only as a last resort. Particularly if you’re stranded but not in immediate danger, your vehicle provides shelter and additional resources, and giving up those assets in favor of walking away on foot can have fatal consequence.