September is National Preparedness Month. It’s a great time to evaluate your own level of preparedness and see what preparedness plans and services your city or county has. How are you going to celebrate National Preparedness Month? Here are some ideas: Find out about Preparedness plans in  your area. Every community should have an Emergency Response…

A power outage can be stressful. If you have prolonged power outage, you will be glad for a hot meal. What do you have planned for cooking if you can’t use your stove? This month’s goal will help you be better prepared for power outages. No power? No problem. Here are some of the more…

If you read Part One and decided that a generator should be part of your preparedness plans, you now need to decide what kind of generator to get. Basically there are three types of generators: 1.  A camp generator. These are the smallest and the cheapest, and they run on gasoline. They will not provide…

You’ve heard me say it a dozen times: Our Midwest winters are not for amateurs. Please, please, I hope you are all taking winter seriously and are ready (or as ready as you can be) for the worst that Mother Nature can throw at us. I’ve covered Winter Car Kits a few times. Now it’s time…

…unless you have a Winter Kit in your car. Seriously. Look at these temps for today and the next few days. Please. Don’t go driving in this weather unless you are properly prepared. Winter is serious business,  especially here in the upper Midwest. Anyone who goes out in severe weather without a good Winter Kit is…

Should you worry about a pandemic? A few years ago there was a lot of buzz in the news about Swine Flu (H1N1) epidemics and quarantines. Before that the concern was Bird Flu and before that it was SARS. There’s no way to know with certainty how much of a threat any of these diseases…

We often talk about the need for heat and light during an outage. This is especially important if the outage occurs during the winter, when going without heat could be dangerous. It seems like a generator would be the natural answer to this kind of emergency, right? But a generator can be expensive and it’s…

 Wait!  What??? Doesn’t everyone have a stash of food in their basement? I talk about having food storage all the time like it’s something that all normal people do.  I have to remind myself that the idea of having a food supply is alien to many and sounds very doomsday-zombie-apocalypse-ish. Why else would anyone have…

If you have a 72-hour kit… Congratulations! You have taken an important step to being prepared. But it’s not enough to build a 72-hour kit and then just put it in the closet and forget it. You also need to check the kit periodically, preferably twice a year. If the first time you test your…

If you’re not sure you need a generator, read Part One. Don’t know what generator to buy? Read Part Two. If you have a generator, read this BEFORE you need to use it. Rule Number One: Be ready now. Get your generator now. Don’t wait until winter comes to buy a generator And for heaven’s…

A creative Wonderbox My sister, Cynthihah, had some red fabric that came to her free. So she used it to make a Wonderbox. But she thought this red was just a little too…RED. So, since she lives in Washington, she did the only logical thing: she turned it into an apple! How creative is that?…

The first year after we moved to our little house on the prairie the winter was brutal. Dozens of blizzards and snow storms, record-setting snowfall, all culminating in a mega-ice storm that took the power out for ten days. After we dug ourselves out and recovered from the trauma of that winter, we vowed to…

For some, prescription medication is a matter of life or death. If you have a medical condition that requires you to regularly take medication, you should consider having an extra reserve of those essential drugs. Good reasons to have a stockpile of medications During a disaster you may find it hard to refill a prescription.…

Be sure to read Part 1: Preparing for a Quarantine When a quarantine is in place A quarantine will be much less stressful if you have prepared ahead of time, making sure that you have supplies on hand and are knowledgeable about caring for the sick. Here are some things that will help you get…

There are apps and websites for just about anything you can imagine and the same is true for Preparedness. Here is just a sampling of the many apps and websites that can help you be better prepared: From FEMA The Emergency Prep app from FEMA alerts you to natural disasters and tells you where nearby shelters and other services…

How will you and your family communicate if there is a local disaster or regional crisis? We’ve become so accustomed to phones, especially cell phones, that we almost never give a second thought to how we might communicate if phone service were disrupted. It’s more common now to bury phone landlines, which makes them less…