In case of emergency, do not do this

by Sally Jack

We recently attended an event where we were taught about the importance of having and/or updating a grab-and-go 72 hour emergency kit.
In an emergency, it typically takes three days before power, water, and food supplies can be restored.
No one knows when a disaster will strike, so it makes sense to be prepared to take care of yourself and your family.
It’s a good idea, really it is, it’s just that all those perfect kits on display made me realize that the only thing I have ever been prepared to do is teach folks what not to do in case of an emergency.
Like the time my mother decided to host a mock emergency to see how prepared we were:
“This is an emergency,” she said on the phone in her best Emergency Broadcast type voice. “Grab your 72 hour kit, bring the kids, and come to my house as quickly as possible.
“And no fair stopping at Blue Mountain Foods to embellish your kit on the way to Blanding,” she added. “I’m timing you and I will know.”
She had a good fire going in the fire pit in her back yard when we arrived so that we could get down to the business of cooking and eating our dinner.
The rules were that we could eat only what we had brought, and cook it only with equipment we had with us.
Well! The evening was challenging and eye-opening even for her.
Her handy-dandy purchased and prepackaged kit-for-one had waited so long for this eventful moment that the cute little cans of juice had eaten through the aluminum, soaked all of the food in the kit, and proceeded to grow interesting mold and penicillin in a variety of weird colors.
My sister’s kit fared no better. Her cans of chicken noodle soup were so old she didn’t dare feed them to her family.
The cans of corn and applesauce were seriously rusted on the bottoms. The quick-cook spaghetti seemed to be alright, but the spaghetti sauce had cankered out the can and leaked all over the weevil-y granola bars.
A bottle of stale water to cook the noodles with rounded out the family’s supplies.
Her kids enviously eyed our dinner, which consisted of Meals Ready to Eat, or MRE’s which we could heat in a pan of water over the fire.
We allowed our kids to choose a meal to share with another sibling. Our daughters chose chicken and rice, but when we emptied the contents of the bag onto their plates, they said it looked like barf and started to cry.
They were coaxed into trying it with the promise of s’mores for dessert when they had eaten five bites each. That was enough to convince them it tasted alright as long as they didn’t look at it.
Our boys were too busy whooping and hollering around the yard and poking the fire with sticks to notice what their beef MRE’s looked like and they ate them without complaint. They were pretty vocal about not having anything to wash it down with, though.
Our youngest didn’t fare as well. Of course I had diapers in my 72 hour kit. They were just three sizes too small.
We laughed about our “prepared lack of preparedness” as we gratefully toasted the fresh marshmallows Mom had so wisely provided.
We went home vowing to be better prepared next time.
Next time came several years later when a police officer knocked on our door with orders for us to evacuate immediately.
A broken gas line was leaking natural gas into our neighborhood, which meant that our house was in danger of exploding without any warning, which meant that we had to evacuate Now!, which meant that he was tapping his foot, anxious for us to leave before he exploded along with us.
Our teenage daughter had the presence of mind to grab her purse as we ran out the door. I did not. I was feeling much too rattled to think of minor details like that.
We hopped into our car and zoomed toward Zions Bank, bursting to tell Derryl about the emergency.
He was on his bike headed home for lunch when we passed him on Main Street. We waved him down and breathlessly told him that we couldn’t go home because our house might explode!
His suggestion to go to the city park and see what sort of lunch our 72 hour kit had in store for us was met with silence.
“You did grab the emergency kit on your way out the door, didn’t you?” he asked.
Uhhh, actually, no. I was too rattled to think about minor details like that, too. We settled for lunch at 7-11. His treat.
Four hours later, when folks in our neighborhood got the All’s Clear signal to return home, our 72 hour kit was still safely tucked inside the closet by the front door, waiting to save our lives in an emergency like this.