Emergency Preparedness: Building a Home Emergency Kit

Hopefully you’ve already identified the most likely hazards in your area (from the BC Hazard Map) and created an Emergency Plan (by downloading and completing the fillable PDF). The next step is building a home emergency kit. 

At the very least, your home emergency kit should consist of:

1. One of your go-bags (more details to come next month)

2. Essential supplies for three to seven days (primarily food and water)

3. Some additional emergency items

Today I’m going to focus on the second and third points from the list, and next month we’ll run through the go-bag.

Before I get into it, let’s take a look at how I’ve put together my own home emergency kit. In my opinion, the “home” part of home emergency kit shouldn’t be set in stone. I’ve beefed mine up a bit and designed it so that, while it will most likely be used at home, it can double as a takeaway to a safer location. That way if I feel the need to go elsewhere, if my vehicle is accessible, and if I have enough time to grab the emergency kit as well as my go-bag, then I’ll be set no matter where I go. Lots of “ifs” there, but they are all certainly real possibilities.

Also, we almost always have at least seven days worth of food in the house, so that part isn’t critical for us. Nonetheless, we keep at least three days worth of food at all times in or near our home emergency kit.

Essential supplies for three to seven days

These essentials are designed to keep everyone in the home alive until it is safe to leave home. A plastic bin is probably the best container for your emergency kit, but a duffel bag could work just as well. You could even have a combination of the two. 

For the essentials, water is where you need to start. In our case, we don’t keep the emergency water in the bin, but it is close by.

For drinking and sanitation, it is generally accepted that a person uses a minimum of four litres of water per day. Count the number of people in your household and multiply by three days for the lower range or by seven to get the upper range. So, in my household of two people, we need between 24 (2 people x 4 litres x 3 days) and 56 (2 people x 4 litres x 7 days) litres of water. Even the bare minimum is a lot of water!

We keep at least two cases of individually bottled water near our kit, and each case has 12 litres of water. We rotate these by periodically using the oldest water bottles on road trips and always buying another case when we get low. With these two cases, we always have at least three days worth of water. If we are staying at home, we would start using the bottled water for consumption only (doubling how long it would last) as there is sufficient water in our hot water tank to use for sanitation. And if we have to leave our house, those two cases would get thrown in the van along with everything else. We’ve also augmented our go-bags to include a LifeStraw, significantly increasing the options for what would be considered safe drinking water.

While the average human body can easily survive seven days on water alone, food just makes it a lot easier. It helps extend that survival time and should always be part of your home emergency kit. Same deal as with the water; make sure you have three to seven days worth. And it should be non-perishable, or at least long-lasting and regularly rotated.

As I said, in our household we’re not too concerned about this, given the amounts of food we tend to stock regularly. Nonetheless, we wanted food for at least three days in the kit itself just in case we have to leave home and take the kit with us. Eventually, we opted for a variety of food sources: a three-day kit of freeze-dried emergency rations (shared between the two of us, so technically a day and a half each) plus a mix of rice and canned goods such as beans. Freeze-dried rations and rice require hot water, so that meant including a pot in the kit. And cans require a can opener (make sure it’s manual in case there’s no electricity), so that was also thrown in.

Getting these three to seven days of food can be done cheaply with dry goods (stored properly, of course), such as beans and rice. Or can be done expensively with all seven days covered by pre-made freeze-dried meals. But, at the end of the day, what goes in your kit is entirely up to you and should reflect your situation. 

Additional suggested emergency items

Some extra items you could throw in your kit include:

• Garbage bags and moist towelettes (for sanitation)

• Sturdy footwear

• Dust masks

• A Help/OK sign to display the applicable side in your window during a disaster

• Anything else that you feel you need in your unique circumstances. For example, in out kit, we’ve added a camping solar panel (for charging small electronics) and a small Coleman gas stove.

At this point you may feel that some items are still missing, and you would be right! Remember, a go-bag is a part of your home emergency kit. For some emergencies you will likely be able to stay at home and so the “go” part of your go-bag won’t be needed. 

But there may be scenarios where you need to leave immediately. Your go-bag will hold the missing items and is what you will take if you need to leave the house with little or no notice. That’s where the “go” comes in, so it really needs to be treated as a subset of the bigger kit. And that’s why we’ll devote special attention to it next month. Stay tuned! 

And for those of you reading this article in print form, all the mentioned resources and links are from www.PreparedBC.ca

Arnold Machel, CFP® lives, works, and worships in the White Rock/South Surrey area. He is a Certified Financial Planner with IPC Investment Corporation and Visionvest Financial Planning & Services. Questions and comments can be directed to him at dr.rrsp@visionvest.ca or through his website at www.visionvest.ca. Please note that all comments are of a general nature and should not be relied upon as individual advice. The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of Arnold Machel and may not necessarily reflect those of IPC Investment Corporation. While every attempt is made to ensure accuracy, facts and figures are not guaranteed.