Are You Prepared?

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I’m going way off topic today to talk about something that keeps circling in my mind. Allow me to sidetrack from pushing you to be your most authentic self for a moment and talk about a few other things I believe are important to consider.

This blog originates in western Nebraska. Within the last several months, we’ve had higher than normal temperatures and way above average wind speeds. The landscape here is mostly flat grassland.

We recently had a wildfire that affected five different counties and burned around 640,000 acres.

Farmers and ranchers in the path of that fire have had to evacuate homes, horses, cattle, and their livelihoods.

At one point, there was a chance that the fire might jump a highway. That would’ve brought it a whole lot closer to my location.

Anyone who’s read at least a few of my blog posts knows that I religiously read a book called Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach. I’m currently reading the book again for the third or fourth time and every time it means something different to me.

The book has an entry for every day of the year and the last day of each month suggests something else you should be putting away inside a Caution Closet.

I’m not a Doomsday prepper and so until this year, I would simply skim over these end-of-the-month entries. I can be a slow learner, but I’m starting to take notice.

With the recently contained fire and a monthly reminder that I should be creating a Caution Closet, I’ve started to consider a few things.

Such as…

If my family has to evacuate their homes within a short amount of time, what do we grab to take with us? There’s no way I’ll be able to carry all of our photo albums, my dogs, cats, and some clothing.  

If cell phones are out of service (for whatever reason), how do I get in touch with family members?

For that matter, how do I find the numbers of my loved ones since we haven’t had to memorize phone numbers since I was in middle school? (And for some of you - ever.)

And the worst one, if we’re all told to evacuate and our cell phones aren’t working, where do we meet?

This is the stuff of nightmares! I hope I’m never in any of these situations, but some Nebraskans have been. I’m assuming their phones were still working when they had to abandon their homes, but thinking of all the priceless sentimental items they had to leave behind is scary enough.

The one thing I have going for me is a purchase I made not long ago of a fire-resistant briefcase. Our most important papers are inside and it’s not too big that it would be a problem to grab and run.

The other thing we all have working in our favor is that so many of our photos and important documents can be stored in the Cloud. As long as we know how to get to them, they’re safe.

​Things to do today

For peace of mind, I plan to print and also have a Google document list of phone numbers of those people closest to me. It embarasses me that I don’t actually know many by heart, but that’s a downside of technology, we get lazy.

The other item I’m taking care of right now is one suggested by Sarah’s book. Our phones can keep our medical information available on the home screen when you update the setting, “show when locked.” There’s also a spot to set up in case of emergency, where your phone automatically calls those closest to you, in the event of an accident.

None of these scenarios is one we want to think about. I’m sure those families who lost their homes and their livestock weren’t planning on that fire reaching them that day either.

Sometimes on the journey to finding ourselves, we have to take a minute to take care of each other, too.