Evacuating: What to Take

I took this whole quote from the May 5, 2010 blog post of Totally Ready. I love to read that blog because she constantly talks about things we should be thinking about for emergencies.

It was interesting what things this woman did and did not remember to take when she evacuated from the San Diego fires two years ago.

"We had a half hour notice to evacuate. A friend called when he was called by a friend who received a reverse 9-1-1 call. My initial thought was, this is a drill, we’ll be back tonight, we’ll be the only ones on the road. All of these assumptions were wrong. My husband grabbed the kids and told me to grab a few things. What did I grab? Makeup! Of course when he came in and saw me I woke up to the important things. We ended up taking three days worth of clothes, photo albums, camera, computer, file documents, journals, scriptures, 72-hour kits, and the kids each picked one toy. There was no forethought; I just grabbed what I could, what was visible.

I wish I had taken past journals, letters from my mission, my wallet, CDs and movies for the long drive. Can you believe I forgot my wallet?

A drive that would normally have taken an hour took three times that long. We did not take food, so our 72-hour kits were used to supply snacks in the car. We learned that you should never put mints or minty gum in your kit without wrapping it separately. Everything tasted like mint.

I now have a plan, an updated box of important documents is ready to go in the garage, and we always have at least a half tank of gas. The experience affected my children more than I thought it would. The smoke was very scary for my son, and he still talks about it. He still pretends to put out fire in our grass. I know they had feelings of displacement and confusion. We went to Toys R Us when we were in LA that night. Toys and food are what they needed."

(After that woman's story, the blogger, Carolyn Nicolaysen, gave these tips.)

There are a few unspoken tips here. First, you need to take food, at the very least the food in your 72 hour kits. You may be heading to a great final destination (your out of area contact) where they will feed and pamper you but the drive there will be long. You will not want to exit to purchase food as there may be long…lines of traffic waiting to get back on the freeway. Avoid stopping for anything if at all possible. A quick ten minute stop may end up adding an hour to your trip.

Second, you grab what you can see so place a list near your exit door so you will SEE it. This list should include items you had deemed important to grab when you need to evacuate quickly. A great list does you no good if you fail to use it. Place your Disaster Preparedness Binder next to your computer so as you grab the hard drive you remember your binder which will also contain vital information.