This is the second article in a five-part series on preparing your household, “Beyond the Emergency Fund.” For five consecutive Mondays, we’ll look at a variety of preparedness methods such as food and water storage, alternative power sources and ways to prepare for specific types of household emergencies.

Last week we discussed the importance of having enough potable water storage on hand for each person in your family in the event an emergency disrupts the flow of public water systems. Moving right up the order of importance, next we’ll discuss food storage – something that can be costly in terms of dollars and storage space.

The 72-Hour Emergency Food Pantry

The initial phase of any good emergency plan is one that covers your family in the event you are cut off from facilities and rescue for 72 hours. In most localized, regional emergencies (floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) help should arrive within three days. That is not always the case, but in terms of survival preparations, you can usually count on some relief within 72 hours of a disaster.

So first things first. Most people should have enough food on hand to survive three days without a trip to the store. However, if you are the type that shops every evening on the way home from work, you might want to put a little money aside and start your own food pantry at home.

When preparing a 72-hour emergency cache of food, the easiest thing to do is pick up a few extra non-perishables on your next grocery trip. Canned vegetables, dried beans, rice, peanut butter, and canned tuna are a good start. You can add in other snacks to build complete meals if you wish, but remember, chances are you’ll be operating without power and could be heating foods and water on a grill or over an outdoor flame.

Don’t forget to toss in a manual can opener to easily open canned goods. We picked up an extra one and tossed in our pantry next to our emergency food storage because in an emergency we didn’t want to have to be digging through the kitchen drawers looking for our can opener.

The Two Week Plan and Beyond

Scaling up a bit in scope of disaster scenarios, now imagine a regional disaster has occurred and basic services have been disrupted. Foods disappear from grocers’ shelves within three days, and resupply is impossible thanks to impassable roads. Now what?

The answer is a larger, two-week emergency supply of foods. Planning two weeks of meals for each person in your household seems daunting. Remember, when calculating water needs we used the rule of thumb one gallon of water per person per day. Similarly, you might estimate each family member’s basic caloric requirement, and then multiply by 1.5, considering in a survival situation you may be moving, rebuilding, scavenging, etc. and burning more calories than usual.

In our case, I’ve planned using 2,000 calories per person per day. That number is probably a little high, but accounts for tougher conditions than we are used to living with, when we might be able to lounge around and get by on 1,200 – 1,500 calories.

All Calories Are Not Created Equal

It might seem easy to come up with 1,500 calories worth of food by eating rice, pancakes and canned veggies and fruit. The problem is, that type of diet is severely lacking in two main types of foods essential to survival: fats and protein.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, I’d suggest checking out The 5-Gallon Bucket Food Storage Project created by Jack Spirko (creator of one of my favorite sites/podcasts, The Survival Podcast). Even if you don’t follow his storage methods, his ideas on planning for proper carbohydrates, fats and proteins in survival food stockpiles are important.

Prepackaged Long-Term Storage Food

If you aren’t up for creating your own food buckets you might want to check out long-term food storage vendors. I have personally tasted (and stocked) Mountain House foods. In fact, our pantry now includes a number of #10 cans from Mountain House, including foods like rice, green beans, beef stroganoff, spaghetti, chili mac with beef, granola cereal, etc.

The #10 cans have a 25-year shelf life if stored according to the directions (basically kept in a cool, dry location). I’ve also heard good things about companies such as Food Insurance and Shelf Reliance, but I have yet to try their products.

Here’s a look at our emergency food pantry – still in the early stages:

The Frugal Pantry Project (long-term storage) – a few #10 food cans, a lantern, flashlights, spare batteries and a few packs of beans and rice

Buying foods in this form is expensive, but the nice thing about such a long shelf-life is that you don’t have to focus on expiration dates and rotating stock as much. With a 25-year shelf life, we can basically buy a few #10 cans each paycheck, store them and forget about them until we need them. I suppose in 15 years or so I might crack one open and make sure it is still edible.

The bottom line when it comes to food storage is to start small. Consider the various disaster scenarios for which you’d like to be prepared, and their likelihood of occurring. For instance, a local natural disaster such as a tornado or a flood is more likely than a large scale, apocalyptic nuclear attack. Not saying we shouldn’t be prepared for both. However, I like to prioritize emergencies and plan accordingly.

With monetary emergency funds we try to get that first $1,000 stashed in case of a car repair, or busted pipe in our home. Will this prepare us for unemployment or a serious medical event? No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get started. Similarly, I think it is prudent to have a few backup food and water supplies at home to get you through that likeliest, 72-hour emergency.

Once that first-level emergency food plan is in place, build from there until you have a level of emergency stockpile that makes you feel comfortable. How will you know when that point has arrived? When you can envision practically any type of emergency and sleep comfortably knowing you have done all you can do to prepare.

Post by Frugal Dad

I’d be grateful if you could check it out, and also – if you can – find a spare couple of quid to donate to this worthy cause.

Ever found yourself at the end of your tether with your child? You don’t realise how lucky you are…

In the space of eight days: my wife broke her arm while out in the yard tossing a frisbee with the kids; my older son awoke with massive swelling on one side of his face that his pediatrician feared might be a drug-resistant staph; my younger son snapped both bones in his arm (he fell while running about 8 feet from where his mom had her flying disc mishap).

Some thoughts about our “rough patch,” as we have been calling it:

My guilt took me by surprise. Though I got a few suspicious looks from the hospital staff, I had no direct involvement in any of the accidents. I didn’t even have indirect participation (our daughter threw the frisbee that felled my wife, as I have frequently pointed out). But I still had moments when some primitive part of my brain was telling me that I had failed as provider/protector. Just because my the family dinner table looked like the aftermath scenes from HBO’s “The Pacific.”

Wow. Folding laundry. Awesome.

A child with a clearly broken arm, and a child with a mysteriously inflated face inspire related but completely distinct brands of parenting panic. The broken arm (clear deformity, no doubts about the underlying issue) make my mind race, the adrenalin flow; you feel for the child’s suffering acutely, but you know it will be better soon (and it is). The mysterious dirigible face is a slow-moving nightmare. The pediatrician seems perplexed and concerned, fears of flesh eating bacteria surface, a real gnawing anxiety follows you everywhere during the day. It’s painful to look at the kid. Fortunately a cool-headed pediatric dermatologist calmed us, diagnosed him, and set about making him better. The palette of parental fear is rich and varied.

I now hate the phrase “when it rains, it pours.”

Between the astronomical deductibles we now owe and long lines of parents waiting at the ER to receive primary care for their sick babies, I’m beginning to suspect that we may have some health care issues in this country. What? Did I miss something?

My wife is as tough as they come, but we probably should have come up with a better plan than, “I’ll stay here with the kids, you drive yourself to the ER.” If I had driven her, I might not have missed this priceless exchange:

Admitting Nurse: On a scale of one to ten, what is your pain level.

My Wife: Uh, about a four.

Admitting Nurse: Ma’am, you have a visible wrist fracture, it must be worse than a four.

My wife: Ever done natural childbirth? This is a four.

Love that woman. Glad she’s on the mend. The rest of them, too.

When I was a kid, there was a series of commercials for “Chiffon” margarine that had the tag line, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!”  Lately it seems that perhaps we must have been trying to fool her and now Mother Nature is seeking her revenge and proving her prowess with a daunting display of disasters.  Earthquakes, blizzards, hurricanes and tornadoes are just the tip of the melting iceberg.  What’s a mere mortal human being to do?  In all seriousness, the Boy Scouts had it right when they made their motto “Be Prepared.”  There are many things in life that we cannot prevent, and the sudden seeming wrath of Mother Nature is one of them.  But we can do our best to be prepared, and keep our families prepared for the unexpected “force majeure.”  Inspired by a recent recording of the Cast of Dads podcast, and my own experiences with Hurricanes living in Florida, here are…

5 Ways To Be Prepared When Mother Nature Roars:

1) Portable Power – An unfortunate side effect of many natural disasters is the loss of power.  When Hurricane Wilma struck my neighborhood, we were without electricity for almost 2 weeks.  You quickly learn how reliant we are on electricity.  Having multiple sources of portable power in your home is a must. Options include generators and lots of batteries.  There are many battery chargers that include USB or 12-Volt plugs so you can use them to charge your mobile phones and other devices.  The problem with batteries, however, is that they have to have a good charge to be worthwhile, and they lose their charge over time when idle.  Therefore it is important that “emergency” batteries are replaced with fresh ones periodically, and that battery charger devices are regularly plugged in to refresh their charging abilities.  It goes without saying that multiple flashlights are an essential need, and I have found that having a few self powered (wind or shake) flashlights really come in handy as the “battery” issue is no longer a worry.

2) Reliable Communications – While we all rely on our mobile phones for just about everything, there is a good chance you won’t be able to use your phone reliably after a natural disaster.  If the networks are not directly affected, there will be extraordinary high call traffic, making it hard to get a connection.  Try text messaging if you cannot get through for a voice call as you may be more successful with the data network.  Also, as you want to conserve battery life, you want to keep voice calls short and to the point.  Eventually, you may no longer have use of your phone if the battery dies and you’ve exhausted your charging options, so it is important to have other ways to get information and find out the status of the emergency.  I have found a wind-up (crank) emergency radio to be extremely useful.  They are inexpensive and functional.  I have one that has AM/FM/Shortwave Bands as well as a USB plug to charge other devices.  I have a second one that has dedicated weather radio bands, and a built-in flashlight.  Not only are these radios great for finding out the latest news and other reports when the power is out, but you also need to keep everyone relaxed and entertained, and a little background music from the radio goes a long way to give a semblance of normalcy to an awkward and quiet powerless home.

3) A Family Check In Procedure – Of course disaster can strike at any time and therefore it is possible that you and your family members may not be together when Mother Nature goes ballistic.  As parents, our greatest fears are when we are away from our children, so make sure you and all your kids (or their schools and caretakers if they are too young to do it themselves) know what the family emergency check in procedure is.  Assume that you may not be able to just call each other.  Therefore you should consider establishing a reliable relative or friend in a different State or part of the country that can be the point person.  Make sure all your family members know multiple ways to contact the point person – home/office/mobile phone, email, text message, social networks, etc. – and let everyone know that if they can’t reach you, the next thing they should do is contact the point person, and let them know their status.  Of course the point person can also reassure everyone about who they have already heard from.  Another good idea is to have an agreed upon meeting place away from your home in the event your home is inaccessible. (Note to self: refresh this program with my own kids!)

4) A Plan For The Pets – If you have pets they are part of the family, so a family emergency plan has to include your fine furry friends.  If you have multiple pets and multiple family members, you might assign each person a particular pet that they are responsible for watching over and/or evacuating in an emergency.  Have proper crates, carriers and leashes easily accessible and it is probably best to keep pets contained during the crisis, as they are every bit as frightened and concerned as you are.  When Hurricane Wilma struck, we kept our three dogs and cat contained in a bathroom, and while their howling added to our stress, we knew exactly where they were and that they were safe.

5) Food & Water – It is always a good idea to have an ample supply of water in the house.  Stick a case of bottled water in a closet or in the garage and forget about it.  If you have 5 gallon water bottles delivered, make sure your regular order is for a few bottles more than your family actually drinks so you always have a few “spare” full bottles.  A stock of canned goods seems like a good idea, but keep in mind that you may not have the ability to heat things or boil water.  Take a look in your pantry and cabinets and see what foods you have that are not perishable and are “ready to eat” without cooking or boiling water.  Stock up on more of those.  Peanut butter, dried fruits and nuts and power bars are all good things to have “extras” of at all times.

These are just a few of the basics and I am sure there are many more important tips for being prepared.  Please add your own tips and suggestions to the comments and together we can turn this post into a useful resource for parents and families.

Most importantly, especially for parents, do your best to remain calm and provide your children and family with the support, confidence and leadership they will most certainly need when Mother Nature strikes.

NOTES AND DISCLAIMER: Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to those affected by the earthquakes in Haiti and now Chile.  If you are so inclined you can donate to the Red Cross here.  Also, some of the links to products in the above post are Amazon Affiliate Links.  Any affiliate revenue generated by the links in this post will be donated fully to the Red Cross.

Jeff Sass is the proud dad of ZEO (Zach, 21, Ethan, 19 and Olivia, 18).  He is also a seasoned entertainment and technology exec and active social media enthusiast.  You can see more of Jeff’s writing at Sassholes!and Social Networking Rehab.

Photo Credit: © victor zastol’skiy – Fotolia.com

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