Preparing for a Disaster

Today I am breaking my 15-minutes-a-day-photography streak because I spent the entire evening buying supplies to prepare for the family's emergency kit. The unfortunate current natural disasters are a wake up call of how unprepared I am if an earthquake or tsunami were to hit Southern California. We have so much to learn from Japan and how graceful they have reacted by helping each other and remaining calm. Your character truly shows in a state of chaos and Japan has been so exemplary, I keep them in my thoughts every day and I hope that everyone affected by these terrible disasters are able to overcome all the challenges. We are also being affected indirectly but definitely not to the extent that Japan is and I can only imagine how difficult it must be.

Remaining calm is probably one of the most important qualities to have when an emergency strikes. Otherwise, your common sense is clouded and your next action could mean life or death. I highly recommend http://72hours.org/build_kit.html to get acquainted with the how to's of natural disaster preparation. It is quite an investment in terms of money, time, and space but I think our survival is worth the investment. I spent a couple of hours at the 99 cent store getting a lot of these items and since I am preparing a kit of 7 days, it was the perfect place to head to as a starter. However, there are some items that are more efficient to get online, especially for the quality. For example, a multi-functional tool (think the movie "127 Hours"), quality flash lights, or protein bars.

I am probably about 40% done with the family's emergency kit and  and have so much more to go but hopefully by the end of this month I am better prepared if something terrible were to happen in the foreseeable future. They have been saying that the "big one" is coming to California for a long time but I never really paid attention to it until now. Anything can happen in a blink of an eye and it's better to be over prepared than not prepared at all. Reality sinks in when you have to include a photo of every member of your family in case someone goes missing. When I think of the suffering in Japan, I feel so heart-broken :( I wish everyone well and hope things get better...