going back to emergency preparedness, this blog might be helpful in working to get out of debt etc.

Finances

Emergency preparedness again, this time Finances. This one is very important, especially right now, there are a lot of people who are having a lot of trouble because they had debt before the economy started going down. It is terribly important, esepecially right now, to avoid debt or to work on getting out of it. In unstable financial times a lot of us may need to rethink our finances and spending habits. If you fall into this category or have debt you can go here for suggestions or help.
It's also very important to have a reserve of money built up for unforeseen circumstances, such as job loss, medical emergency, etc.

Be Prepared...

Mostly because I thought of the title and the picture to go with it. However we do need to be getting along with our tour of emergency preparedness so I suppose we'll take a look at planning. As was brought up in stake conference today, or maybe it was last night, in an emergency you either can or you can't, you either know CPR or you don't etc. So planning, you need to know what you and your family are going to do in an emergency. Elder Packer spoke last night about being in Spain as a mission president when 9/11 happened It was interesting to hear a rememberance of that day from outside the states, and how other people were impacted. Elder Packer said that they were at a zone conference when they found out about the events taking palce in New York and they were able to get the missionairies all together and tell them what had happened and how to act. He said that one missionairy asked if he'd spoken to the prophet to find out what they should be doing, Elder Packer told him that he had not, but that as part of his training as a mission president he had been told what to do in an emergency situation. Elder Packer went on to say that even if he had tried to call the prophet to find what he should do, he wouldn't have been able to get through with everyone trying to call and make sure people they knew were all right. It could have been very bad to have a group of missionaires and not to have know what to do with them all in an emergency, but because they had a plan they were all right.
We need to have plans in place and well known, I imagine that most families have a plan for what should happen if there's a fire, things like how to exit and where to meet up and call for help. Planning for a fire is all well and good, but more than that we need to have plans in place to cover every conceivable thing. To make plans consider things like:
Going through your daily routine(s), who is where when? what if someone is not with the rest of the family?
Make meeting spots
Have contact relatives/friends, someone who doesn't live in the same area if something major occurs
What happens if you or your spouse is at work?
Do you have pets? What happens to them?
Does anyone take any medications?
Where are your important papers kept?
Do you know where to go to get help?
Does your community have an emergency plan?
There are resources you can go to such as http://www.ready.gov/, with resources especially for planning. This site has instructions for specific disasters.
Oh, I will just add, that we need to have this information in some form of text copy as the internet will likely not be at our disposal in an emergency. If you're interested in finding more about all of this just start googling these things and you'll have tons of sites at your disposal. I also wanted to add this that I just found, even though I already did food storage.
Remember, we need to prepare now.

72-hour kits

Quite frankly I've run out of enthusiasm for this but I did promise to do it so here is yet another instalment on emergency preparedness. If you're not sure where to start with the whole preparedness thing then 72-Hour Kits are a good place to start, it's about the most basic level of preparedness. A 72-hour kit would be helpful in an earth quake, tornado/hurricane, car accident, getting lost, etc. You should have a kit for each person that's in your home and you should keep at least one in your car. You can buy ready made kits or you can make your own. If you want to make your own or if you're just curious to learn more about 72-hour kits try here or here.
Another tip in general is to always keep your gas tank half full, that way if something happens and you're far away from home, you're won't get stuck with the gas light on.

Emergency Preparedness - First Aid

Back to Emergency Preparedness, in the lesson I heard on Sunday first aid was mentioned as a part of emergency preparedness and that was something that I hadn't considered before but a very good point. In a mass emergency there will be people injured, you may even be injured yourself and knowledge of first aid will come in very handy.
I don't know about you but I've had a lot of first aid training over the years, in every swimming class I ever took, in health classes in school, and every year when we had girls camp. If you're like me you also don't necessarily remember all of that good training so here are some things to refresh us all.
First off, there is training available through the American Red Cross; they offer training in first aid, CPR, AED(Automated External Defibrillator), disaster education, things to know for babysitting, life guarding, etc. Also a note: even if you've been certified for something like CPR in the past you may need to certify again, I believe that you need to recertify every two years.
The Mayo Clinic has a website with instructions on the first aid for many injuries/ailments, including shock. If you only learn first aid for a few things make sure you learn about shock, if a person is injured or sick there is also always the danger of them going into shock.
Some other standard first aid that you should know is how to care for: broken bones, severe bleading, how to make a splint/sling/bandage, heat stroke etc., hypothermia, and choking.
Besides knowing first aid it would be a good idea to have some kind of first aid guide to look to, I found several options on amazon, and I'm sure they could be easily found else where. Another very important thing to have is a first aid kit, I would keep a stocked first aid kit in your home, in your car(s) and even have small kits to carry around in a purse etc. You can find any number of resources for first aid kits. The Red Cross recommends that you include these items in your first aid kits:

• 2 absorbent compress dressings (5 x 9 inches)
• 25 adhesive bandages (assorted sizes)
• 1 adhesive cloth tape (10 yards x 1 inch)
• 5 antibiotic ointment packets (approximately 1 gram)
• 5 antiseptic wipe packets
• 2 packets of aspirin (81 mg each)
• 1 blanket (space blanket)
• 1 breathing barrier (with one-way valve)
• 1 instant cold compress
• 2 pair of nonlatex gloves (size: large)
• 2 hydrocortisone ointment packets (approximately 1 gram each)
• Scissors
• 1 roller bandage (3 inches wide)
• 1 roller bandage (4 inches wide)
• 5 sterile gauze pads (3 x 3 inches)
• 5 sterile gauze pads (4 x 4 inches)
• Oral thermometer (non-mercury/nonglass)
• 2 triangular bandages
• Tweezers
• First aid instruction booklet

I hope that these links and information help and that you look into them deeper on your own.
Also an addition about food storage or family home storage as it seems to be called now, I didn't notice this link at providentliving.org; there's more information there including a pamphlet available in several different languages.

Emergency Preparedness

We had a lesson on emergency preparedness today, that's nothing new, they happen every so often, usually I hear them and know there's a lot to what they say and usually I forget about it before I do anything about it. I would like that to be different this time, maybe this will help me keep with it.
If you're LDS, then the idea of emergency preparedness is nothing new and you've probably heard about it your whole life, food storage is probably what comes to your mind when the word is mentioned. For anyone who isn't LDS, we focus a great deal on emergency preparedness, when emergencies come it's too late to be wondering if you've got the supplies to see it through and so our leaders encourage us to prepare now. You might be wondering what kind of emergencies we might be expecting, we try to be prepared for anything that might come our way, be it flood, earthquake, fire, snowstorm, power outage, unemployment, etc.
As I said food storage is probably the most well known aspect of emergency preparedness but it is by no means the only aspect of it. The Church has put together a website called Provident Living, and their section on emergency preparedness coveres home storage, finaces, community planning, communication and lists resources.
I don't think that I can cover all of emergency preparedness today but maybe since I believe that September is emergency preparedness month (and if it wasn't, it is now) I can keep going through out the month, posting more about this and hopefuly learning more myself.
I guess I can start with food storage, because it's the most well known it's also the one I think I know the most about. To start with, the 'why?' We store food because in an emergency it's not likely that you'll be able to make it to the store and even if you can you probably won't be able to keep going to the store or the stores may run out of things. We are encouraged to start with something like a 72 hour kit and work our way up to a year or more supply of food. Food storage food tends to be things like canned goods, and dried or powdered items. Another item would be to store wheat that can be ground with a wheat grinder. Food storage should be something that can last but it should also be something that you'll eat on a regular basis so that you can cycle through your food storage and it doesn't get bad and go to waste.
Food storage can be a daunting task and something that seems like it would be more fitting to do at some later phase in life but I'm here to tell you that any time, now in fact, is the right time to start. I know that if you're a newley wed or living in a small apartment, it can be especially daunting due to lack of space or money but it is possible and worth it. This article in this month's Ensign Magazine offers a starting place for those in small apartments etc. and ideas on how it can be done. Now on the why you should, it's very important to have food on hand, not just for a disaster type emergency, but for financial emergencies as well. As a college student I was generally straining my budget to be able to pay for the next semester's tuition and all the other things in life. I set myself trips to the grocery store every two weeks and a certian budget for those trips. There were weeks when I was digging through my cubard for a can of this or a package of that, that I might have gotten a month or so earlier to be able to make it through until my next trip to the store. It may sound silly but an extra can or two at each trip to the store can really make a big difference.
Look for future posts on 72 hour kits, First Aid, Financial Preparedness, Communication, Emergency Planning and possibly much, much more.