EMERGENCY MEASURES

As I sit here looking at pictures and reading articles on the disaster unfolding (for the past week now) in northern Japan, I realize but for the grace of God go I…for the past decades we’ve all been warned of the next “inevitable” BIG ONE, the earthquake that will at some moment in time strike the west coast. Like most I suppose I live in a state of denial, that this won’t happen in my lifetime, but as the horror unfolds in Japan, not just the earthquake and the following Sunami, let alone the nuclear catastrophe unraveling as I write this, I’ve had moments of extreme clarity…picturing an all out disaster here in California, be it nuclear fallout from a meltdown of Japanese nuclear plants, born on eastward winds across the Pacific or our very own “the next BIG ONE“.

We are getting little information as to whether we are in any danger of radiation being blown over here, that is either good news (as there is no perceived threat) or very bad news (the situation is grave and they don’t wish to cause panic) but I decided it was long past time I remedied a few things here at home, like getting a Emergency Prep kit, some potassium iodine iodide tablets, a few boxes of N95 face masks, and an emergency food stock. I figure it can’t hurt, everything that I am purchasing can be used up in the normal course of events should we avoid such an emergency, and renewed as needed. One can go online to buy from the Red Cross Store (www.redcrossstore.org/Shopper/Product.aspx?UniqueItemId=3). They have a very good backpack, filled with emergency supplies for one adult reasonably priced for $70. Or one can hit the dollar stores/Walmart, etc and stock up on items in this kit…check it out to see what the Red Cross lists as essential items.

Oh, and Good Luck to all of us. And may God help Japan and all its people in their terrible time of need.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. ~Francis Bacon