Preparedness - Have an Emergency Plan

Everybody should have an emergency plan. After all we do have house insurance, health insurance, car insurance even death plan insurance, but how many of us have an emergency plan in case of a disaster? How many people could survive if there is a major catastrophe such as we have seen in recent years with hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in the pacific or the various floods and severe weather we have been experiencing?

Do not be deluded in thinking that emergency services will be there immediately to rescue you and provide food, shelter and medical help. Those services can themselves be severely disrupted and help may not arrive for days. This last winter we saw Europe in the grips of one of the harshest winters and it didn't seem to take too much to cut roads and train services.

The worst effects were from the power cuts as lines came down, some of those services took weeks to restore. Now consider this: how long would you survive in the middle of a harsh winter with no food, no power, therefore no heat and possibly no way to communicate?

Every household must have an emergency plan to survive 3 days to a week if need be, if you could stretch this to 2 weeks so much the better. This would not be too hard to implement with just a little foresight and some careful planning.

Should yo think that being prepared for an eventual disaster is being paranoid, think again. Being prepared could save your life and the lives of your family and friends. A good stock of food, fresh water and medicines can also save you money in the long run by buying in bulk and rotating the usage of the more perishable goods such as cans and dried food.

This preparedness not only applies to house owners, you could be well set up in a city even while renting by adapting slightly to the different circumstances. Two weeks of food and water does not take that much room and why not get a group of neighbours together on this?

Many older folks still do this, just recently while visiting my mother I noticed the ample supplies she kept in her garage {she lives in an apartment building], enough to feed a family for at least 2 weeks. Her answer to my comment was: "well you never know, I can't go out as much as I would like to and so I like to have every eventuality covered". Good on you Mum!

To find out more on how to prepare for an emergency go to: http://www.squidoo.com/guide-to-surviving-2012.