Over the last week, I’ve been getting better prepared for possible emergencies.

I have been pulling together “survival” kits (well, they’re more like what we would need to make a quick exit out of the house or loss of utilities- depending on situation – and survive at least a few days without access to basic amenities). There’s a first aid kit; ablutions kit; and general kit that includes some tools, flashlights, batteries, toilet paper, etc.

The rest (such as clothes and food, water – as they have a shelf life – and paper copies of documents) will be pulled together at the last moment through a checklist that I’ll write up and keep in some place we both know. When you’re in a panicked state, you’re not thinking clearly so it means that you’ll either freeze in the moment as people are yelling or panicking around you; or you run around like mad trying to find everything.

I don’t want that.

At least if something happens, I’ll only have ONE thing to think about and that’s the

?The checklist. ?

I can then bark out orders what we need to grab and where it is located in the house to make a quick exit.

https://twitter.com/activatelearn/status/1501741863891771392?s=21

Noticing Change

Recently, we have been having lots of humidity which is bizarre for Melbourne.

The weather has been definitely changing over the last years and I notice it from year to year. It’s been getting warmer but also it flip flops between cold weather in summer, scorching hot weather with devastating bushfires or like this year, intense humidity with massive volumes of water when it rains. The volume of water is too much for gutters can’t hold and collect it resulting in flooding on the street and around storm water drains (because the council doesn’t always maintain them).

We recently had flooding in one of the rooms that destroyed our collector items of DVDs & Videos (they were still in pack, wrapped in plastic early years but now destroyed) because of the overflow of gutters. (We keep our gutters cleaned and drains unclogged but they STILL weren’t enough for the volume of rain that down poured).

Still, we are the lucky ones unlike our northern neighbours.

If I think over the last couple of years, I would say this feeling of having to be prepared, hit home for me when I was crouching low under a doorway of our house as an earthquake with magnitude of over 6 rumbled.

For a Melbournite, we had never experienced so many different serious events at the one time so it was disconcerting.

You think you’re relatively safe in the suburbs but if you really sit down and think about it, we just aren’t prepared mentally or even physically should something happen.

When the Earthquake Struck

When the earthquake happened on 22 September, 2021, I heard a loud rumble and I looked outside to the street. It was perfectly still and no cars or trucks about. It took a split second for me to realise what it was, grabbed my phone and ran a few steps to the doorway which happens to be in the middle of the house. I crouched low.

As I was crouching, I remember expelling a stream of “fucks” but then, next instant moment, I kept talking to myself and saying, “Keep calm, breathe” and doing my box breathing technique. Thinking back now, I remember that although scared, I was calm.

When the house shaking was over bd things were still, while still crouched low, I made one phone call to Andrew and another to my parents in quick succession.

The phone calls kept short with a couple of questions:

“Are you ok? Are you hurt?”

“Do you need any help right now?”

Just knowing where they were at that time was enough to calm me down before arising, to go and check on Pud the cat (who was fast asleep on his back on our bed, paws in the air) and doing some damage checks around the house.

The damage usually will show itself in other ways over time (and it did, we had to repair roof and reseal window frames).

In that moment, I wasn’t thinking of anything else except Andrew, my parents, my brother. Nothing else mattered. I can also remember how clear everything was. As a matter of fact. You just snap into protection mode.

Later on I called my brother and his family however, as he has it together, well prepared and fairly self-sufficient, I was less worried.

However watching the devastation of the floods recently in Queensland and northern NSW where entire towns were wiped out displacing thousands of people with no emergency support or assistance from federal government (who didn’t call it a national emergency blaming the states for not asking for support), it hit home for me that push comes to shove, I may not be able to rely on emergency assistance in times of crisis.

We saw this first hand with the floods but also, last year in the Dandenong Ranges. During freak storms, trees crashed on peoples homes, closing roads and thereby isolating them from support.

It took over a week to get power and in the middle of winter, freezing cold and wet weather, people stayed in their destroyed homes to prevent looting, unable to keep warm and dry to get help.

This, from an outer Melbourne suburb that is half hour drive away!

It’s stuff like this that makes you realise how much we rely on services like water and power and how powerless we are when something out of the ordinary strikes us.

A couple of years ago, we had the devastation of bush fires that wiped out vast tracts of land across Australia of which many homes, flora and fauna perished. It put a heavy dark blanket of smoke over the cities for a long time. Seeing the level and scale of this was frightening as you watched blue skies turn a dark orange quickly. As an asthmatic, this was most problematic for me.

Then, the pandemic. Lockdown 1.0 (we had 6 of them – a total of 263 days) was the worst as people anxious of what it meant. A curfew was put in place for the first time since World War II in Melbourne. with strict rules of when we were to be outside. One hour that’s it, within 5km radius, masked up. All shops except medical centres, post office and supermarkets closed. We saw shelves emptied of food, fights for toilet paper, supply chains affected.

So with all that, we have been through a lot these last couple of years so I decided that I need to get my act together and be better prepared for any event.

What Have I Done?

The Australian Red Cross have an app called GET PREPARED and I followed all the steps there. It steps you through creating an Evacuation Plan, Emergency Contact, Documents, and How to Prepare Your Kit.

The irony is not lost on me that it’s online so my next action is to get everything in paper copies. (I’m thinking about times when my phone might not be charged or I’m fumbling trying to find stuff on it or highly likely, the phone is wet or lost or there’s no signal). I’ll need to bag everything up in plastic (like I was shown when we did bush training when I was in the Navy) to keep everything dry and keep it in a backpack that I can pick up immediately when I need it.

It didn’t take long to pull the kit items together as I already had many of the items (scattered around the house). This way, I know where they are if I need to get to them quickly.

The only thing left to do is to write down the Evacuation Checklist and write down the list of phone numbers, name and blood group on paper. I have laminated pouches that I can string a lanyard and put them around our necks so they can easily be seen and accessed if we’re in shock.

Am I going overboard?

Yeah possibly, but really, I’m doing this for my peace of mind. In my head, if I’m that little bit prepared, my mind is not overloaded in a time of crisis and I can think of safety first. In the past, these were freak events but now, you can’t deny they’re happening more.

Black swan events? Yep. Best be prepared. Heres a book review of The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

(Oh for the record, I’m not a “survivalist”. I’m a “prepper”. If you think I’m going to live off the grid and booby trap the perimeter of my property….no. Just some actions to get to a place of safety such as an evacuation centre).