Prepare to Prevent - the Preparedness Challenge

When we think of preparedness - may of our minds immediately rush to hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes - you know the completely devastating lunar like landscape left behind. How many people think of flu, local power outages, accidents in the home, job loss - those everyday emergencies that seem to hit at inopportune times. As I have been thinking about being prepared, I've thought that if we were prepared for all the "little emergencies" if and when a big one hit, it would be bearable because we have prepared and lived through all the components.

Why is this so important? My son hit the nail on the head the other day. As we have been participating in this Preparedness Challenge, he said, "We must be really be prepared because I don't notice a difference." As a parent I can't imagine the stress of losing a job for an extended period of time or having an illness in the family that prevented regular trips to the store - not to mention a massive scale emergency. To couple that stress with children who won't eat unfamiliar food or children that have their lives entirely disruptive and begin to have anxiety about everything because there is no familiarity anymore - that would be one hundredfold times harder to handle than just the "emergency" itself. We all thrive on routines and consistency. To think that those things can exist during an emergency if we are not prepared is ridiculous.

Prepare to Prevent. Prevent stress, prevent hunger, prevent injury, prevent despair, prevent fear, prevent death. This year we will Prepare to Prevent. We are starting out with this Preparedness Challenge. I encourage all to try this! For 1 week we are going through a series of challenges ending with a preparedness fair. This will continue through the entire year with more in depth information and workshops on topics of interest.

Challenge #1 - Go one week with no shopping. The scenario is that there is a pandemic and we have been quarantined or just that your family is all sick and can't leave. There is no outside entertainment, restaurants, or shopping allowed - you have to live with what you currently have in your home.

Challenge #2 - Go one day with out power. No tv, radio, lights, heat. Remember that hot water uses electricity as do garage doors. The scenario is that there was an ice storm that knocked out power. It could also be a construction project cut the line, a car crashed into a power pole, lightning struck a transformer, there was an overload on a power grid - we are always hearing about power outages.

Challenge #3 - Go one day without using cell phones to communicate with your family. The scenario is that the Cell towers or satellites are down. During a regional emergency the cell networks become overloaded and can't be used. Families are encouraged to have an out of state contact person that family members could check in with via other modes of communication. They are also encouraged to develop a family communication plan so that in the event of a catastrophic emergency where family members may be at different locations - there is a plan of how to "check in" with each other to know where to meet and to find out if everyone is ok.

Challenges #4 - #5 (and a bonus challenge) will be posted later because they haven't been revealed yet.

The feedback is inspiring. Lessons learned will be posted. I hope we never have to live through a catastrophic emergency, but I know we all live through "little emergencies" almost daily and when we are prepared - we will ultimately prevent heartache and regret.