Take Your Bucket and Run!

Quite a few years ago, I was called to be the Ward Emergency Preparedness Coordinator. There has never been a calling worse fit for me than that one. Was it really a good idea to ask the 20 something year old who had no family, no house, no experience, and no idea and who lived on frozen burritos and potato chips to advise the entire ward in the importance of Emergency Preparedness? I'm still laughing thinking about the ridiculousness of the situation! I agreed to give it a try and went home with the fate of the ward in my hands (okay, so maybe not. . . But maybe)!
I spent very small amounts of my time reading up on what emergency we were most likely to face here in our area... Earthquake, duh! And then came up with one of the most genius plans human kind has ever known... 72 Hour Kits! What? Someone already invented that?! Thank goodness, because I had no idea what to put in one! I did do quite a bit of research in the field of 72 hour kit preparation as I was scheduled to present to the entire ward Relief Society how to make one, and since they take those kinds of things to heart and take the presenters idea and run right out and make one of their own, I wanted to give them information that would be useful.
Let me present to you the 72 Hour Bucket:

This is simply a 5 gallon bucket with a lid. I put a little "cush" on the lid and voila! The 72 hour kit becomes a 72 hour chair! 

I put my math skills to the ultimate test and discovered that 72 hours equals 3 days! If worse comes to worse, I have to survive for 3 days using only the contents of my bucket? Also, the point of the kit is to have something you can grab quickly and run for the hills in case some sort if disaster makes it impossible to stay in your house and live off of what is already there. My bucket weighs about 20 pounds, and after I heft it about 20 feet I might have to sit down and take a breather, hence the cushion on the top!

Here's what I decided to put inside:

Looks like it's going to be a long 3 days!

I'm sure I could survive off of the things I have here, but after reading Angela's blog post about 72 hour kits (Angela, I hope you don't mind but I'm about to share the link!) I feel like she is going to be in the wilderness eating 5 star meals and I'm going to be huddled under my bucket trying to chew open my 5 year passed expiration date canned ham because I failed to put a can opener in the bucket! 

Here's the link to Angela's 72 hour kit:

http://foodstorageandsurvival.com/72-hour-survival-kits/

Needless to say, I don't think I excelled in the Emergency Preparedness calling. Do I think being prepared is important? Absolutely! Do I think it's becoming more important every day? Absolutely! Is all of the food in my bucket at least 5 years passed the due date because I didn't keep my 72 hour kit current? Absolutely! Have I been enjoying the string of power outages we have been blessed with in our area lately? Absolutely not! Do I think they are a sign of things to come and have shown me exactly how unprepared I really am? Absolutely! (More on the power outages in a later post) 

                                         I was just impressed with myself for fitting it all in there!

To wrap this up let me just say, you should probably not count on the people around you to be prepared enough to rescue you in an emergency, because chances are, they are less prepared than you are!

-Mandie