Are you ready for an Emergency? What would happen if you had to evacuate your home today? Would you be prepared? Those are many of the questions that were addressed during an Emergency Preparedness Fair that I participated in on Saturday.
A friend of mine who hosted a 72 hour kit booth said, "I thought it would be a good idea to take the kit apart and give you a step-by-step guide to how I put my together. There will be 10 Mini-Lessons in this series. Over the next few weeks, I will share 1 Step at a time. Take it slow and focus on one task at a time and you help your family become more prepared for the future.
Step 1: Today's task will be to focus on Food and Water, two of the most essential items for your 72 hour kits. I store all of the food in two gallon size ziploc bags. The food items were purchased at Walmart unless otherwise noted. You don't need to be buy exactly what I did, but I wanted to give you at least an example of what you could put together for your family. Most items last about 2 years, but the granola bars and fruit cups are good for about 1 year. I wrote down a list of all the food I purchased with the date of expiration. When it comes closer to expiring, I take the food out of the bags and add it to our pantry and my children's snack bags for school. This helps to not waste any money. Another idea would be to take your 72 hour kits on a family road trip and eat what is there before it expires. It will also give you an idea if you have enough food to last for 72 hours.
Food (items are for one person)
1. Can of Chili
2. Can of Soup
3. 2 100% Juice Box
4. 2 Applesauce Cups
5. Cup of peaches (or other fruit cup)
6. 2 Tuna Salad kits
7. Sunflower Kernels
8. Cashews
9. Dry Roasted Peanuts
10. Dried Mixed Fruits
11. Beef Jerky (Target)
12. 2 Tuna Salad bags
13. 4 different granola bars
14. 3 100% fruit sticks (Costco)
15. Raisins
Water
You will need 1 gallon of water per day per person. I love these stackable 1 gallon water jugs that are super easy to store from Arrowhead. You can find them in most grocery stores. Walmart sells them for $1.18 each, but my sister purchased them awhile ago on sale at Safeway for about 50 cents each! Check your weekly ads for the best price.
I also have 1 water filtration bottle per person inside their backpacks as well. You can purchase one from the LDS Distribution Center online. The bottle will filter 100 gallons of water with just one filter and it will remove up to 99.99 percent of pollutants. It also removes up to 90% of fluoride. It only costs $16.50.
The Seychelle found at the Distribution center says that you can filter water from tap or rainwater, rivers, streams or even lakes, turbid and stagnant water. There is a list of other filters that you can purchase as well like Heavy Metals and Radiological Contaminants and one that enhances the alkalinity (pH) of drinking water. Those filters can be purchased directly from Seychelle. I did notice that if you purchase through the LDS Distribution Center it is less expensive.
Are you to excited to get going now? Here's a basic check-off list that you can use to build your 72 hour kits.
