Emergency Preparedness: Water Storage & A Stove

I thought I'd share a couple of valuable but inexpensive emergency preparedness items we picked up in the past few months. Since we live in a very crowded urban area and it IS earthquake country (amongst other possible disastrous scenarios) we know that if the you know what hits the fan, we are going to be on our own to take care of ourselves.

We have 72-hour kits, although the food needs to be a bit updated. But we do have food storage in the cupboards & could easily grab a few things in a pinch. Gear-wise we have a lot of what we'd need as well.

We got a large retailer gift card from a family member recently and I really pushed myself to get something meaningful and important with it, rather than just blowing it on laundry detergent and toilet paper. So I went to the store with the intention of finding something we needed that would last us a while and serve a valuable purpose.

I was thinking about emergency preparedness items and came across this stove that is an ideal emergency tool. It's easy to set up, basically effortless except to connect the butane can which pops in the side compartment. At about $20 dollars it's a great deal and would be very stable and easy to cook on versus some tiny camp stoves. This would also be great for picnics for a night or when traveling to heat up some water or make a quick and easy meal in the outdoors.

The second things we purchased were two of these Reliance 7-gallon water storage jugs. These were about $18 each. After we got home we noticed that they had a few mixed reviews online but we liked that they were easy to store and held a significant amount of water. Fourteen gallons for the three of us could be rationed out to last at least half a week or more. If we got one more we would have enough emergency water to last us a full week at the rate of a gallon of water per person per day.

One of these would also be good to pack on long road trips in case of emergencies like a freeway closure (for an accident, fire, storm, etc.) where we would have to wait a significant number of hours before the road was passable again.

We will continue to add to our emergency supplies but these are two things I am really comforted that we have now. Food and water will be critical items in a bad situation. Over the years I've put out quite a bit of information about emergency preparedness. Below are some links that might be helpful.

Emergency Preparedness For A Blackout
72-Hour Kits
Food Storage
Be Comfortable And Safe In An Emergency