Disaster Preparedness, Yet Again (Photos)

As any regular readers know one of my real areas of interest is disaster preparedness. Leah Ingram who has a terrifc blog on how her family is living a green life just had a post about fire safety involving ashes from a fireplace and some other causes of home fires. The Lean Green Family (formerly Suddenly Frugal): Fire Safety for Everyone I never thought of fireplaces ashes causing a fire but this should be read by everyone who has a fireplace and uses it. She also writes about some other common household causes of fires such as candles.

I recently did a presentation about getting organized at my local library and briefly did a section on organizing photos. I also mentioned something that most peple never think about which is what happens if there is a fire or other catastrophe and their home is destroyed. If you read in the news about fires or floods the two things that people always mention losing are their jewelry and their photos. I used to suggest that people pick out some of the most important photos and make copies and store them with a friend or neighbor or a relative across the country. Today you can burn them into a CD and put it in a safe deposit box or send them to a friend or someone out of your area.

Many people store all of their digital photos on their computer and don't think that if their hard drive crashes or there is a catastrophe they will lose all the photos. It can be good to take a few minutes precaution and safeguard those photos. You can replace clothing or furniture or other things but you can't get the photos back.

Disaster Preparedness

Seeing the movie "28 Weeks Later" got me to thinking --yet again -- about disaster preparedness. This week there are big fires in California, New Jersey just had a big floods a couple of weeks ago and every winter there are blizzards. The possibility that you'll have to prepare for a zombie invasion is remote but other things can and, unfortunately, do happen.

Make sure you know where your flashlights are, that they are working, that you have an ample supply of canned or other non-perishable goods, bottled water, antiseptic towelettes or hand sanitizer, a battery-operated radio, a first-aid kit, a manual can opener and a phone that plugs into a phone jack, (since the phone company uses a different power system and the phones will keep on operating when there is a power failure).