A friend of mine was encouraging others to prepare their homes for emergency situations. I shared this:
"To point out for those who do not know, hoarding is panic buying in the moment of a crisis. Prepping is buying a little extra each time you go to the store. This thing that time, another thing the next time, and so on. Hoarding/panic buying clears the shelves during a crisis. Prepping is done slow and steady so it does not have a noticeable impact on the store shelves.
Even if your home and all of your belongings wash away, knowledge is carried with you. You can help yourself and others if you know how to purify water, start a fire in the rain, use plants as food and medicine, build a shelter, signal for help, etc. Knowledge of survival skills is free to get and easy to practice. It's all over the internet and easy to find. It won't cost you a thing to acquire that knowledge, but it may save you or someone else. We frequently took our entire family of 9 into the woods "camping" for survival skills training.
I have had a major fire loss, had my home flooded and heavily damaged due to a hurricane, been stranded over 24 hours somewhere very remote and precarious in the rain without a cell signal, had medical emergencies of family members, etc. My survival skills have come into play each time to keep us safe and comfortable. Even if you can't fill your shelves now, you can gain knowledge.
I had a baby as a hurricane hit our area hard. (I actually had babies in two separate hurricanes on the same date years apart.) On this occasion, I came home to a filthy flooded house damaged from flood waters and wind. We had dead animals because a few of the livestock would not cooperate with my husband. I had four small children and a newborn with filth and destruction everywhere. I got right to work when my feet hit our place. My family did whatever I asked to improve our situation. We had no power, no running water, and worked our tails off from sunup to sundown from day one after the storm. We quickly installed a hand pump to get water from our well. We had plenty of bleach and vinegar on hand, so we started cleaning. Because I knew how to wash and sanitize my home and belongings without electricity and running water, our home was the first one in a long list in our neighborhood that was not condemned for living. I washed the flood-soaked clothing and linens in a tub in our pop up. My arms were exhausted, but I kept at it. We worked hard to save what we had. That FEMA agent told me our efforts to sanitize everything had saved our home from being condemned. As we quickly found out from our neighbors, we spared our family a lot of trouble with government intervention. My tip: Do your best to clean before they get there or you may lose access to your home until it meets their standards. I learned a lot from that experience.
