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Life's necessities. The television flashes a warning for all residents in your area to evacuate the area immediately. The disaster you feared most is actually taking place right now. How much time do you have to gather your family and important life saving supplies to sustain you for at-least 3 days? Would you have 10 maybe 20 minutes before disaster strikes?

If you only have 20 minutes to gather everyone in your family plus, necessary survival equipment, food and water together and evacuate your home right now would you still be in your home when disaster hits? If the answer is yes you may want to consider gathering necessary food, equipment and supplies before the advent of an emergency.

Develop a plan for you and your family to act on in the event of a real emergency before one actually happens. Practice your plan with them. Decide where to go, what to take and a meeting place both before and after you evacuate. This will help speed the response time of your family to an evacuation alert. Families often become separated during evacuations. Ensure that your plan includes places to meet after the evacuation.

Gather enough food and water for at-least three days. These must be packed in advance in order to enable your family to concentrate on evacuating quickly. Food and water that you pack must be lightweight, waterproof and have a long shelf life. Military meals can be purchased from many Sporting goods stores as well as other camping foods. These have a shelf life of over two years and can be rotated out of your packed food supply and replaced. Families can then consume the older meals before they expire on hunting, camping or fishing trips.

Water and other beverages should be kept in lightweight sealed containers. There are special straws on the market used for primitive camping that can be used in an absolute emergency. These straws contain a special filter designed to purify water contaminated with parasites,Giardia or other pollutants. It could be a valuable to for survival if you happen to run out of potable water.

Investing in a portable solar charger which can be placed in a backpack would be wise considering you may not be able to have access to electricity. Purchase radios, flashlights and
lights that are charged by using a hand crank.

Each family member should have their own backpack if they are able to carry one. Here's a list of suggested items to include in your backpacks:

1. water-enough for three days
2. food-enough for three days
3. radio-hand crank
4. flashlight-hand crank
5. emergency blankets and sleeping bag
6. small 1 or 2 person bivouac tent(for backpackers)
7. first aid kit
8. survival knife with accessories
9. solar charger
10.cell phone, portable hand-held cb, walkie talkie(cell phones may not work in the event of a disaster)
11.toiletries like camp soap, mess kit and change of clothing
12.Straw for drinking unpurified water

Prescriptions and important papers should be kept readily available to grab at a moments notice. When packing a survival backpack remember to keep it light, important and necessary. Check the consumable products every six months for expiration dates and rotate supplies out. The best places to shop for and purchase emergency supplies are sporting good stores, camping supply stores and medical disaster suppliers on the Internet.

Learn more about this author, Danette M. Scott.
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