In Case of Emergency....

Through earthquakes and fires and many years of backpacking we have assembled numerous first aid kits and a large backpack full of emergency supplies. I have been putting off going through all this and organizing it...do fifteen year old BandAids stick anymore? but once I started this morning I realized that without being able to predict the nature of the emergency, it's just a question of creating some sort of comfort zone amidst chaos.

The backpack on the right was a 'gift' for contributing money to the local public radio station. It has the kinds of supplies one would need if one ran off an isolated cliff somewhere and wasn't discovered for a week...a tarp, emergency mylar blankets, a big plastic water jug, blocks of some sort of food substance wrapped in foil, and sealed small bags of water. One of the reasons I bought my car is that it comes with an SOS system. A real person calls if you press a button or if the airbags deploy. If you don't answer, emergency services are supposed to be able to locate you via GPS. Do we really need the red backpack? Where do you draw the line in what disaster might befall you? Where do you keep this stuff? Maybe I'll put it in OilMan's car, but I'm not sure it will fit with the golf clubs...

The bag on the left contains emergency first aid supplies which I carried with me on every backcountry hike...band aids, moleskin, a snakebite kit, a splint and elastic bandage.  Thank goodness I never needed the snakebite kit. I got the splint after our accident prone neighbor broke his fibula and we had to carry him and all his stuff out of the wilderness. The outfitter with the mules who came by on the trail wouldn't give him a ride but she offered to call for a helicopter rescue.  The neighbor elected to walk (very slowly with a splint made from a bandanna tied around his boot) rather than pay for the helicopter.

The small metal box in the middle contains meds...aspirin, antacid and Benadryl. The Benadryl came in handy on a different trip when the same neighbor got stung or bitten by something and started going into anaphylactic shock. I'm interested in medical stories, and am allergic to penicillin myself, so I'm familiar with the symptoms of anaphylactic shock. Although I'd read about it, I knew there was no way I was going to be able to do an emergency tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen (OilMan always carries one of those), so I was more than grateful when the massive dose of Benadryl (an antihistamine) worked. We had to carry all of his stuff out of that wilderness location too. He was tested for allergies when we got back and found that he had been bitten by a white faced hornet.

We got the big black bin with the yellow lid after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Instructions from our neighborhood block captain were to fill it with boots, gloves, clothing, food and water...everything needed to survive for at least a week if an earthquake destroyed the block? The city? We lived right in the Hayward Fault. There's even a hand crank radio with a cell phone charger. We kept most of our backpacking gear in there at one time also, but most of it has been loaned given to children and grandchildren over the years.

There's a certain fantasy element to assembling all this stuff, but the most realistic solution is what actually happened...Dana banging on the door in the middle of the night telling us to pack a bag and leave....She watched me sorting through all this stuff this morning and said, 'if there's an emergency, we'll walk to your house, because I'm not going to do all that'....