Earthquake Preparedness - How Prepared am I?

In my last post I had a few people ask me what is contained in my emergency kit.

My kit is rather large because I'm of the belief that if a major disaster occurs one will need to fend for themselves for longer than 3 days.  I only have food and water provisions for 3 days but I have some other supplies which might help me for a longer period of time.

I have prepared a small suitcase on wheels and in it I have put a ready made emergency kit and added many other things.  In the store bought kit there are basic medicines and band-aids as well as 3 days supply of food and water. I've added more band-aids and some antibiotic ointment.

The food supplies and water have expired and need to be replaced but I would use them if needed before replacing. I've been researching on line about where I might find and purchase replacements. I think I have to call the stores first to make sure they have what I want. I prefer buying ready made food and water because they are small and packable and not nearly as heavy as packing canned goods and bottled water. If I can get to the Boy Scouts shop or the Travel Clinic I would also like to purchase a Life Straw which is a filter built into a straw.  You can also find a Life Straw on Amazon. One Life Straw will filter up to 1000 liters of impure water without using chlorine or other chemicals. Water purification tablets are also a good idea and I have a box of them.

I thought you might like to see my actual bag and what is in it.

When I open my suitcase to the main compartment it looks like the photo below. In the pockets on the left I have reading glasses and sun glasses. On the right I have my store bought 3 day emergency kit in the red bag (I'll share the contents a bit later in the post).  The burgundy cloth is a pashmina shawl and under it I have a pair of stretch jogging pants as well as a few long tops and a few short sleeved ones as well as socks and undies.  I've also packed a few toiletries (toothpaste, toothbrush, facial wash and hand lotion), facecloths and two small towels.

My suitcase has two main compartments. The second compartment holds small towels, light sticks (a source of light), emergency blankets and waterproof pouches for storing paper items and other things you don't want to get wet, like your cell phone.  I want to put a few paper documents in the pouches too (passport copy, birth certificate and insurance policy) and I hope to prepare these in the next day or two because several of these items have been updated.

Inside my store bought emergency kit there are blue and white packets of water which you see below and the blue shiny packet above at top of photo is the dried food bars. I purchased many other things to add to the bag.

I have added 2 pair of basic work gloves, a stove, some fuel for the stove, toilet paper, whistle, camping matches (they are supposed to help you light a fire even if they get wet), water purification tablets, light sticks (in case one runs out of candles), fire starter, some velcro ties, an exacto knife, a mini magnifying glass, a sewing kit,  a few Tylenol, extra candles, an AM/FM radio and some extra batteries to power it. I also have some silver coins. In the event of some economic collapse I figure that real currency like silver, gold or jewels would be of assistance. One can barter with it. While I don't have family jewels I went and purchased silver coins in smaller units as I couldn't afford gold. These coins might also be useful in an earthquake because one might not have access to ATMs and I'm not sure how far paper money will go.
 

I do not yet have a warm jacket in the kit. I have purchased a packable one and need to pack it before the weather gets cold.

My bag is small but very heavy.  Even though it is on wheels I may need to find a new bag or think about reducing my clothing. The last thing I'm missing is sturdy shoes. I've heard that it is important to have sturdy shoes because there will likely be a lot of glass and rumble to find your way through. I don't have these yet in my kit. My kit is already too heavy.  I need to figure out what to do about this.

I need to try and do that soon because the earthquake forecaster is saying that another larger earthquake will likely hit off the west coast of Canada/ Vancouver in the next few days.  There was a 6.2 earthquake off the coast of Northern Vancouver Island around Port Hardy 6 days ago. See here if you are interested in today's global earthquake update.

In another bag, I have some items like garbage bags, more toilet paper and a crowbar.  I need to check and see if I put a collapsible cooking pot in there. These are " in case" needed  items.  You might wonder about the crowbar.  I  was advised to buy one.  In the event of an earthquake it may be difficult to get in and out of buildings due to shifting ground and buildings being damaged.  I was also told that people who are unprepared may try to steal what others have (the bad side of desperate humans).  If you don't want to lose what you have you need to be prepared to defend your property.

What I Don't Have

I do not have a Grab-and-Go bag. This is a bag you take with you for a quick overnight need. I don't think I can keep track of so many bags and to have everything one needs in several places gets to be expensive.  Ideally one should have an emergency bag for 72+ hours (what I have), a grab-and-go bag and a car bag.

I found the information on a provincial website for a grab-and-go bag (see the graphic below). You can see that it is quite comprehensive and that is why I figured I might as well have a bag that keeps me for at least a few days or more.  I would still like to prepare a modified version of a grab-n-go bag soon.

I don't have an extra phone charger so I haven't packed one in my earthquake kit. There is unlikely to be any electricity for the most part so a charger isn't going to help much. I do own a power bank but it is quite heavy and I use it on a regular basis so I don't want to pack it away. I see a solar charger in the graphic below. I've never seen a solar charger myself but it sounds sounds like a very good idea to have one.

While I have a portable stove and fire starters I also need a Swiss army knife, a collapsible pot, cup and cutlery and a small flashlight. I already have several small flashlights, some collapsible cups and some cutlery. I just need to pack them. I also have a small tin plate that belonged to my great grandmother (the only thing I have of hers) and I'll add this item to the kit as well.

I haven't saved any photographs and I'm not going to bother keeping paper photos.  I have many saved on line and if and when electricity is restored I can access them that way.

I have it on  my list of  'to dos' to talk to my doctor about what to do about extra medications. I don't get prescriptions for extra medicines so I can't add my medicine to the kit. I don't quite know what to do about that. I also have a medical device which runs on electricity. It is too large to put into my suitcase and I can't do that in any case because I need to use it every day. Again I have no idea how to deal with this.

I mentioned that I need to copy my birth certificate, passport and insurance papers.  I already have this information but with the exception of my birth certificate they need to be updated. I  also need to get an extra set of keys for both the grab-and-go bag and the larger earthquake kit. I have several sets of keys already but one is already placed in the house in case I need it and one each given to two different family members.

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   I am not fully prepared yet. I'm hoping and praying for the best as I need more time to get properly and fully ready.

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Grab-and-go.  I got this from the provincial website for earthquake preparedness.  These supplies or a modified version should probably be in a back pack so at the very least you have some basic supplies if you can't access the larger kit.

 

Don't count on being home when there's an emergency. In addition to having one at home, create grab-and-go bags for your work and vehicles that contain:

• Food (ready to eat) and water
• Flashlight and batteries
• AM/FM radio
• Medications
• Seasonal clothing
• Blanket
• Cell phone charger
• Pen and notepad
• Personal toiletries
• Small First-Aid kit
• Extra pair of glasses or contacts
• Cash in small bills
• Local map with your family meeting place identified
• Whistle

The challenge in preparing any bag for an emergency or disaster is reminding yourself once or twice a year to check your bag and change out anything that needs changing:  clothing for the appropriate season, expired food and water, medications and batteries for your flashlight or radio.

In Canada we still operate on setting the clocks forward (in Spring) and backward (in Fall) by one hour. That would be an appropriate time to also check supplies and make sure they are up to date. If you live in other parts of the world that are not on Daylight Savings Time perhaps you can set a phone reminder to check supplies at two different times of the year that work for you.


Safety Tips (These tips relate to apartments but some of them are applicable to a house).

• In the event of an emergency, do not use elevators
• If your power goes out, know how to navigate your building complex without electronic access 
• Do not use BBQs or camp stoves in your unit following a disaster
• Fire alarms and sprinklers may go off: do not panic.
• Do not flush toilets in case water lines are damaged.
• For tips on how to respond to specific hazards, visit gov.bc.ca/PreparedBC

Last but not least, I'm dealing with two family members and trying to prepare them. Unfortunately neither of them really believes that anything is going to happen or if they do, they can't be bothered to take time to prepare. Their inaction causes me stress because I don't want loved ones to be unprepared. A few years ago I bought both my younger brother and my nephew a few supplies to get them started and asked them to at least add a few clothing items for themselves in a backpack. I don't know whether they have their bags at the ready but I've recently connected with my nephew's girlfriend and she hopes to get both herself and my nephew better prepared if and when she has time. Currently she is dealing with a family member who is dying.  So she has a lot on her plate.

I'm also telling all my friends and people I come into contact with about the need to prepare. From time to time I am sharing the information on social media and here on the blog. Again, some read or hear and believe but still do nothing to prepare. Others are already nominally prepared and yet others have good intentions to prepare.  I know it took me years of hearing things and trying to educate myself before I actually took some positive action and I am still not fully prepared.

Wherever you live I hope you have an emergency kit. You can turn to it if you have a disaster of any kind. It is a good idea to store your kit outdoors in a space that will hopefully be easy to access. If you live in a house or building and it all collapses it could be difficult to find and access a kit even if you have one. If you live in an apartment there isn't much choice as to where you can store it. This one factor kept me frozen in inaction for many years before I finally decided I would prepare a kit and keep it near my bedside since I couldn't keep it outside.

It is also helpful to check out your neighbourhood before a disaster to see where it might be safe to go in the event of disaster.  It won't be easy in an urban area due to tall buildings and the rubble and glass that can block your path.  There will also be live wires on the ground from telephone poles and so on and fires started by broken gas lines.  If you remain indoors I've been told that you should get under a desk or a table in the event of an earthquake to protect yourself from falling debris. It is not safe to stand under a door frame. 

I hope this post helps someone or motivates someone to get better prepared. I know the information presented  isn't comprehensive but it is a start. Any action you take to prepare yourself or your family is  probably better than no planning at all and quite likely much more than your neighbour has done unless you live in an earthquake zone and have already experienced many large earthquakes. In these places people do tend to be more aware of the need for preparations.  I don't have pets or children so if you have pets or children or both, you need to prepare for them too.

Let me know in the comment section if you have an emergency kit or if you are planning to prepare one.  If you live in an apartment and have a kit I'd like to know how you have stored your things in your apartment or condo. Preparing this post helps me crystallize what I have and what I don't have and will help me continue to refine my kit. It also helped me realize that the food, water and some other supplies are also available through Amazon and maybe it would be quicker to order on line rather than run around to all the local shops which often don't have certain things in stock.

If you want to hear today's Earthquake Forecast you can watch and listen here.  Several significant earthquakes have occurred around the world in the past week and several today (Tuesday, August 28, 2018) alone, in New Zealand, New Caledonia, South California, Timor Indonesia, and Java among others. Earthquakes are forecast in several places in the next few days including for the Philippines.

A Shakey Start to the New Year 2016

The start to the New Year 2016 has been a bit nice and a bit not so nice.

First I start with the nice bit.

I closed the year by attending my first ever performance of The Nutcracker.  Though I expected it to be good it was even nicer than I expected with all the beautiful costumes, sets and classical music. I think my favourite part was all the scenes with the Snow Czarina in them. She was beautiful and danced all on pointe.  She made look so elegant and graceful but I was thinking "Ouch!"

Of course I couldn't take photos during the performance but here are a few shots taken just before show time and during intermission.

There was a good crowd considering it was New Year's Eve Day. There were still a lot of good seats in one section of the Orchestra.

Only a few members in the orchestra pit.

I hadn't noticed these beautiful chandeliers when I went to the BC Ballet in late Fall.

The final bows were taken.

Now on to a not so nice event.

Two nights later as I was thinking of heading to sleep, the entire area from Victoria on Vancouver Island to Vancouver and south of us, experienced a moderate earthquake.

It was like several shakes of the building, then one loud shake which felt like the entire building was lifted and "plunked" down hard. At the same time as the hard "plunk" a very loud bang occurred. It took 5 minutes on Twitter to establish that it really was an earthquake and another hour for the local television news to start broadcasting. I took that time to locate my emergency kit (how prepared was I?!!) went through it and added some clothes and tried to decide what to do.

I stayed up for another 3 hours before deciding that things had settled down.  I'd heard on the news that the quake was not along the fault line that goes all up and down the coast from Alaska down past California.  Aapparently California had experienced an earthquake of about the same strength several hours earlier.

That is how things started off in my part of the world this New Year's.

Across the world in Kenya where I do a lot of missions work some of you will remember the widow from Mauche, Kenya who recently lost her husband. If you haven't read about it yet you can read more here.

My friend and work mate, Jonah from the Missions of Hope, Kenya, had just finished helping this widow and another young man get medical treatment.  Immediately thereafter he had to rush home and help out with an Initiation Feast

About 16 young Kalenjin boys had just completed their initiation rites. This is a time when young teen boys go away in the bush for one month. There they are taught and guided in the cultural ways, wisdom, rules of personal behavior and cultural rites. The initiation rites are a rite of passage when the boys are also circumcised and after the passing of knowledge they are considered young men who know their place in society.

Once their training is finished, they gather together with family members and community and have a time of feasting and celebration before they make their ways home and back to school.

These are some of the young boys in white shirts, their mentors in purple shirts & family members.

Immediately after the initiation homecoming, Jonah and a team of volunteers went to Pokot country on another feeding mission. They go about once a month and they generally go to different Pokot communities each time.  The first person they came across was this emaciated, elderly woman in the photo below.  She touched their hearts so much and the team members were glad to be able to feed her and several other needy people.

Everything was going well during the Pokot missions outreach but tragedy struck on the 2nd night.

Jonah and a Pokot man who was hosting him were both bitten by a poisonous black mambo snake.  This is probably the most dangerous of the snakes in Kenya and people often die from it's bite.  The Pokot people immediately tried to suck out the venom from these two men and administer traditional herbs.  But these men urgently needed to get to hospital which was many hours away. Someone had to drive all night from Eldoret (located several hours south) to fetch the man and take them to the nearest hospitals.

Jonah was driven to the missions hospital in the small community of Kapsowar where he was immediately attended to and given good treatment.  The Pokot man was taken to Eldoret but we lost touch with him and what was happening.

In Kapsowar the hospital staff did what they could.  But their equipment is a bit outdated and could not detect whether venom remained in Jonah's leg. It seemed likely that venom remained because he was unable to walk or stand and he wasn't healing as expected.

He humbly asked if he could be transferred to a bigger hospital.  Of course, being a a matter of life or death or loss of limbs, it was imperative that he be moved to a larger centre. As he could not walk or stand and he had no family or friend there to escort him he had to go by ambulance.  It took almost another day before an ambulance could pick him up and transport him to the City of Eldoret.  Once in Eldoret, the leg situation was quickly stabilized and improved tremendously.  The equipment was able to pinpoint the venom remaining in the leg. We give thanks as he is now able to walk again and medical staff are ensuring his blood doesn't clot. I'm not certain how long he will need to be in hospital.

The good thing is that Jonah is now in the same hospital as the Pokot man though they on different wards.  It seems the Pokot man unfortunately had not been given medical aid because he doesn't have insurance and he doesn't have any money to pay a deposit.This often happens to poor Kenyans and many of them die while waiting for medical assistance or their conditions radically deteriorates because they cannot come up with funds.

This goes on despite the government officials making public announcements that no Kenyan should be denied medical treatment for lack of funds.  Hospitals have been told that they should administer treatment and worry about billing later. This however is not the practice on the ground.

The poor man had been suffering and in pain for almost a week!  He needed immediate medical help otherwise he was in real danger of losing his leg.  As soon as I heard this I came up with the deposit.  That night the man had successful surgery.  I'm praying for his full recovery so that use of leg is not impaired.

He is very grateful for my help.  Apparently, I have been repaid by him in the form of two goats which are back in his home area.  I intend on letting him keep his goats as he will likely need them to try and pay the hospital bill.  I am just happy he didn't lose his leg. Life is so very hard for these people.  It would be even harder on one leg.  Medical supports are almost non-existent especially in the isolated areas.  It is hard enough to get medical supports like wheelchairs or crutches when you live in the big cities like Nakuru and Nairobi.

Unfortunately the people In Pokot villages live so far from medical help.  Even if they lived closer to fully equipped hospitals, they don't have ready cash on hand to pay for deposits and medicines.  In Kenya you must pay a deposit (which can be quite substantial depending on what treatment you require) before you get any medical treatment (even though the government says otherwise).

I am grateful that both of these men's lives were spared. Jonah suffered one snake bite which was painful and debilitating.  But the Pokot man suffered three snake bites. Both of men are very lucky to be alive.  The longer you are away from medical help, the less likely you are to survive. I think they might have died if the local people did not try and help to suck out the venom and give traditional herbs because it took at least 8 hours for Jonah to get to a hospital and the Pokot man at least 12 hours as Eldoret is even farther away.  Apparently snake bites are very common in the Pokot (northern) areas of Kenya.  The hospital in Kapsowar sees these kind of patients regularly and while Jonah was there as a patient many of those admitted had snake bite injuries.

Thankfully Jonah has medical insurance and it is quite extensive (and good coverage).  But he still has to pay for everything out of pocket (ambulance, hospital accommodation, drugs, doctor, nursing, x-rays, etc.).  He has to save all receipts and make application for reimbursement.

This will be his first attempt to try and get money back from the government for medical purposes.  I'm praying that they do really reimburse him. In Kenya you can never be sure of what is going to happen where government agencies are involved.  If you are reading this, please pray for these two men and their financial needs.

Well my friends, we just never know what is around the corner.

It could be good or it could be bad.

Though my year has started off on shaky ground, quite literally,

I'm hopeful that much better things are ahead.

I'm also grateful that there was no big damage done.

I  give praise that these two men did not die
Through God's grace and man's medical wisdom, both of them will live another day.
Hopefully they both will have many happy years to come but they need continued prayer for full recovery.

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God bless you and keep all of you and give you a good start to your new year.

Photo Credits: Mine and are all taken with phone. The last two photos belong to Jonah of Missions of Hope.