Friday, March 18, 2011

Earthquake preparedness

Of course I don't have any photos of an earthquake happening.
However, I felt my very first earthquake while sitting on this green couch, pictured above.
I was getting ready for school and waiting for my Mom. I remember feeling the room shaking slightly. I was around 6 or 7 years old.
My Mom always got very excited in an earthquake! She immediately opened the front door, but the shaking had stopped by then. She called my Grandma to see if she was all right. Then we went to school as normal. We never practised earthquake preparedness in school, or anywhere. We were never told what to do, or what to prepare for, or what to have on hand. No one seemed to take earthquakes seriously in the 1960's, 1970's or even the 1980's. We were a calm and unprepared people.
The recent March 11/11 9.0 earthquake in Sendai, Japan, has me spooked. Their earthquake is part of the Pacific Rim faultline, which is also ours. I have a small earthquake kit on hand, currently in my front hall closet. I definitely do not have enough food or water on hand to last for 3 weeks, though. I guess in the event of a major catastrophe I will lose a vast amount of weight.
I'd love to be more prepared, so I'm making a list of things I need to add to my kit:
1. Water
2. Canned food
3. Plastic spoons
4. Large plastic tarp
Hmm...I need a place to store all this stuff.

3 comments:

Deanna said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Deanna said...

Curiously enough, here in Texas we had all kinds of disaster drills.
In elementary, they used to trot us out into the hallway and we'd kneel facing the wall, make ourselves into a little ball with our arms covering our heads. During tornado drills, we'd all get underneath our desks.
It was exciting for us because it made our school day shorter. It wasn't until we were older that we were glad that we had something like that just in case...which did happen on May 11th 1970 in Lubbock. We had the biggest tornado West Texas had ever seen. I remember it very well.
As for earthquakes, we only have very few tremors but they do occur. I'd hate to get complacent and think that it could never happen but you just never know.

Loved your photo!

Teragram Nebuoh said...

don't forget a manual - non electric can opener.... otherwise those cans of food won't be much use.