Not much posting has occurred (or knitting for that matter) in the past couple of days, because I’ve been busy acquiring and organizing items for our family go-bags and home disaster kits. When we lived in central Texas, the threat was minimal. If a tornado were to hit, there would be no warning, so there seemed little point in having a kit. Besides, the damage would be localized, leaving much of the surrounding area unscathed. If my house were hit it would be a personal disaster, but not one shared by thousands of others demanding basic life support.<\/p>\n
Now, however, we live in earthquake country. A big one could hit at any point; damage could be widespread. Of course there are other concerns too, though they feel vague: terrorism (biological perhaps) or an avian flu pandemic (not so vague). The aftermath of Katrina provided incentive to do something; I’d had the articles and lists ready for months.<\/p>\n
I’ve been researching what is recommended and would like to share some information in case you decide to create your own. It’s a drudge chore, requires financial investment, and forces one to confront the possibility of Bad Things Happening. But now that we’ve done it (almost complete, just need to photocopy documents and purchase a few hardware items), I feel a bit of relief. I know exactly what to grab in order to survive and to take care of my cats, and I know where to lay my hands on it.<\/p>\n
I’m not an alarmist, but the avian flu is a serious issue. So here are some links regarding this:<\/p>\n
The CDC lists the following people as at-risk for the flu:<\/p>\n
Yesterday while shopping at Costco for emergency supplies, I happened to notice a small line by the pharmacy. They were giving flu shots at a discount to members. Since I work with children and hope to become pregnant, I was considered a candidate. I also got a pneumonia vaccination, since I’d had it as a child and occasionally have some asthmatic breathing. A vaccination won’t protect you from all flu viruses, but some is better than none.<\/p>\n
As for general disaster preparedness, I used the following:<\/p>\n
One cannot prepare perfectly against disaster. That’s what disaster is: unforeseen devastation. It’s difficult to reconcile with the fact that we face the unknown all the time. I decided to prepare as best as I can — not to become pessimistic and morbid, nor to act like an ostrich and hide. It’s about finding a balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Not much posting has occurred (or knitting for that matter) in the past couple of days, because I’ve been busy acquiring and organizing items for our family go-bags and home disaster kits. When we lived in central Texas, the threat was minimal. If a tornado were to hit, there would be no warning, so there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,29,3,31,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-regional","category-science","category-social-science","category-technology"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10945,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/10945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}