Ten minutes to go
By Whitney
by Whitney
What steps would you take if you were suddenly given 10 minutes to get out of your house?
Over at RookieMoms.com, Heather posed this question, challenging me to think about how organized I am (not).
Whether I may be facing a personal disaster, like my husband is out of town and I must take a child to the emergency room in the middle of the night, or a regional disaster, such as an evacuation order for a flood or hurricane, my thought process has led me to conclude that a little readiness can go a long way.
So what would I grab? I think we have two categories – the necessities and the sentimental.
The necessities:
- A duffle bag of clothing for me and the kids
- Cell phones, cash, extra keys
- A backpack of food – probably a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a container of honey, and as many snack bars as I can find in our house
- A folder that I’ve made easy for myself to find (in my fantasy land) of health insurance cards, and depending on the emergency, the house insurance policy
- My kids’ comfort items. Yes, these soft little blankies are necessities. My little one especially MUST HAVE SECURITY OBJECTS or no one will get any sleep
- Sleeping bags
The sentimental:
- We have a portable back up hard drive with about seven years of digital pictures on it. If my husband is home, he would be in charge of retrieving this. If I am in charge, there’s a chance I’d grab the wireless modem instead. The two items look alike. (Note to self – get clarification on the back up drive!)
- Wow. Is it possible that I’m not a very sentimental person? I just sat here racking my brain for other “must-grab” items and determined that I could live without most of my material things. It’s not that I don’t value the quilts that have been made for my kids, or the pants I made them out of t-shirts, which turned into my most popular blog post ever. I just don’t feel any one of these items is most prized over the others. Most of our family pictures exist somewhere online. And the book I co-authored is still in print, so I could get new copies from the publisher.
What would you grab?
I suppose if the above-mentioned items only take me seven minutes to load into the car and I still have three minutes to go, I would simply start collecting all of the picture frames and photo albums in the house.
Now bear in mind that this 10-minute challenge is based on a hypothetical evacuation order – not a fire or tornado situation. If faced with an urgent emergency, everyone should simply leave the house and seek safe shelter. Sorry, stuffed animals: we cannot risk bodily injury for your sake.
This post is part of a blog carnival at RookieMoms.com. Tell us what you’d grab on your own blog and be entered to win one of six mini-duffle bags packed with disaster supplies, provided by California Volunteers. To participate, use the comments form below to tell us the URL of your post. Earn another entry by using the Mr. Linky form over at RookieMoms.com.Contest ends April 30, 2009.
5 Responses to “Ten minutes to go”
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1. Turn off gas
2. Turn off electricity
3. Remove Pets to vehicle(s)
4. Remove heirlooms to vehicle(s)
5. Remove important documents to vehicle(s)
6. Ensure I have my identification and cell phone before locking the home up and departing.
7. Help neibors as feasable
I don’t know what I would do if I only had 10 minutes. Better start getting prepared now, you never know what can happen!
Making an easy-to-transport copy of important information is a great idea. Now I just need to convince my husband that having all that information in one place will not be unsafe in case our house is broken into!
Claire, you can get a fireproof safe or keep it in a safety deposit box out of the house.
I think I’ll grab all the items that are practical. Sentimental stuff,…maybe, if they happen to be along the way.