What About Bob? Your Bug Out Bag or Go Bag

I was at work one afternoon when my wife called. Without peamble, she asked if I was watching the weather. Working in an IT department, my office was in the basement under a multi-story library, so I had to confess that I was not watching the weather at the moment.

Her next words spurred me into action. "Call your Mother right now and tell her to get to safety, then go look at the weather."

After dialing the number and while waiting for an answer, I keyed up the weather station on my PC. There was a huge tornado about a mile from my parent's home and they were directly in the current path. I choked a bit at my Mother's voice when she answered. "Get Dad and both of you head to the laundry room right now. There is a tornado heading your way and it looks like it will hit you in less than a minute."

Unable to do anything more, I called my wife back to thank her. We chatted for a bit as we watched the tornado bypass my parent's home (barely). When the storm was obviously not coming back, I phoned them again to see if they were okay. I asked my Mother if she was in the laundry room and she told me "No. I'm trying to find batteries for my flashlight."

Worry giving way to anger, I asked if at least my sane and rational Dad was in the laundry room. "No. He's in the living room trying to get the weather on the television. Don't worry though Jim. We'll be safe in the laundry room in just a few minutes."

We had a couple of evacuations (and failed evacuations like this one) for my family (grass fire, house fire, etc.) leading my wife and I to gift each household a "go bag". You can probably imagine what would go into a bag like this, but the point is, you have 30 seconds to leave, what are you going to take? We don't prep for hurricanes because we are hundreds of miles from the coast, but everyone needs to give consideration to their potential threat picture and plan based on that.

Lots of items are obvious and will be covered by other posters. There are a couple of specific ones we think might not be covered.

A list of phone numbers and email addresses for the extended family. The local and distant rally point for each household.

The local rally point may even be a spot in your yard. A disaster can be as simple as a fire in the home. You want a rally point where everyone heads, like the driveway entrance or other. This may prevent a loved one going back into the house from the back yard to save you while you stand safely in the street.

I would define a more distant rally point as being outside of the immediate neighborhood (beyond the effected area of a tornado or grass fire for my family).

A virtual rally point for the extended family. This consists of the name, phone#, and email address of a relative or close friend in another region or state in case there is a wide area communications breakdown. Health and Welfare messages, location, contact information can be relayed via this virtual rally point outside the affected area.

A marking chart for the front of your home. Marks that can be read from the street without making it obvious, which indicate that you have moved to a rally point and which one. This is done in our family with simple symbols so that they should be unreadable to the rest of us.

Photocopies of all important documents Drivers license, marriage license, credit card numbers and the numbers to call to cancel them. Some cash, but include a roll of quarters for vending machines if needed.

BTW: within 12 months, none of the other households in my extended family could recall where their "go bags" were, so the fresh batteries we had planned on giving to each household went to a charity that would use them.