Being Prepared

My first real memory is of an earthquake
I was two months shy of my third birthday. I remember dreaming that my bed was shaking, then waking up and seeing my dad and my hugely pregnant mom crouching by my bedside, asking whether I was OK. Sure, I was fine — in fact, I recalled the dream as being kind of fun.

That was the Sylmar Quake of 1971; it had a magnitude of 6.6 and killed 65 people. It was anything but fun.
Since then I’ve been through too many earthquakes to count, the most mind-numbing of which was Northridge in 1994, which registered 6.7, killed 57 and injured 8,700. My husband and I were without electricity for days, and gas for more than a week. I was working as a television reporter at the time, so I had the horrific job of doing live shots outside of every flattened building and freeway bridge in the city, as well as interviewing survivors as bodies of their friends and family members were pulled from the wreckage.
Given Southern California’s earthquake record, being prepared for a disaster wasn’t an idea relegated to society’s irrational doomsday fringe: it was something everyone did, to one extent or another, because you never quite new when “The Big One” might hit — and yes, we all expected it to hit sometime or another.
My dad, a World War II veteran, stocked enough water in the garage to quench our entire neighborhood’s thirst; he also collected canned goods by the pallet. Nobody really teased him until he brought home the generator — but even then, we all agreed that it would come in mighty handy if the worst ever did occur.
Needless to say, when I moved away from L.A., I took my preparedness indoctrination with me. Good thing, because I’ve since weathered myriad tornadoes, blizzards, and ice storms (no hurricane yet, but there’s still time). Nothing close to the end-of-the-world, of course, but I enjoyed my canned beans just the same.
Which is why I was shocked to learn that people in Austin really don’t think being prepared for an emergency is important. In fact, when I posted the question to this magazine’s Facebook page, only one person responded: Heather Bateman, who grew up with hurricanes on the Texas coast.
Certainly, the notion of being prepared has taken a beating as a result of The 2012 Phenomenon. Ever since some kook figured out that the Mayan calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012, the crazies have been climbing out from under rocks and declaring Armageddon. This makes things tough for the folks at Austin’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, who have been trying for 30 years to persuade skeptical Austinites that they really do need to be prepared for a disaster. A real one, not some 2012 movie fantasy.
The problem is that so many people think Austin, given its geographic location, is immune to any kind of natural disaster. This is simply not true. As Denise Blok of the American Red Cross Central Texas Region pointed out to me, Austin is just one ice storm away from being without electricity for a week. And then there’s the possibility of a man made disaster: you may not want to think about bioterrorism, but I can assure you the Austin Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management does.
In other words: Just because nothing has happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen at all.
That’s why you need to get serious about being prepared. I’m not suggesting you build a bunker in your backyard. Just create a family evacuation plan and pack a 72-hour disaster kit. That should tide you over in most emergencies until FEMA or the American Red Cross arrives.
If you want to be extra prepared, download FEMA’s guide, Are you Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness (available at Ready.gov). The booklet is 204-pages long and not exactly light reading, but it details exactly how to plan for and survive just about every possible disaster scenario an overactive imagination can dream up, from hurricanes to nuclear attacks to something called a radiological dispersion device. I don’t know whether to be relieved or worried that the suits in Washington, D.C. are not-so-closeted survivalists, but I have to admit that the guide offers peace of mind for the über prepared.
And really, that’s the point: if something bad were to happen, you want the peace of mind that comes from being able to protect and care for your kids.
It’s the reason I have a laundry room filled with canned goods, water, and a crank radio-flashlight combo; it’s also why I submit to the playful taunting of my friends and neighbors (and, yeah, even my husband), who think I’m wading into the deep end of sanity, a little too close to the edge.
OK, fine. Call me crazy. Just humor me and buy an extra jar of peanut butter and a jug of water the next time you’re at the grocery store (a flashlight and a transistor radio wouldn’t be a bad idea, either). Because the last thing you want is to crouch beside your child’s bed after a disaster and tell her you’re not prepared.
You wouldn’t want that to be her first memory, would you?