My New Calling-Provident Living Specialist

I was just called to be my ward's Relief Society Provident Living Specialist. This is the blog I have set up to store the messages on personal and family preparedness that I will be sending out to my ward in North Carolina.

You'll notice that I have lots of blog posts already. I have been writing on my personal blog about this subject for a couple of years already. So I put all those that I had previously written on here as well.

You Can Make Them or Buy Them

In yesterday's post, I told you to watch Lana Richardson's video on Emergency Preparedness.

If you did, you saw her demonstrations of :

the manual clothes washer (made of a plunger and bucket with hole in the lid), the metal stove made from a metal bucket,

the rehydration kit,

the Sanitation Kit toilet/sanitation kit,

the Wonder Box stove (using BeanBag type styrofoam pellets to keep hot foods hot and continue cooking),

the Can O' Heat (made from a roll of toilet paper w/o the cardboard center plus a bottle of rubbing alcohol poured into it, and lit)

and lots of other great ideas. She sells most of that stuff on her own website, but she also gives instructions for making them. So look under products and see the pictures in case you want to make them yourself.

http://www.emergencyhelps.com/Emergency_Helps/Products.html

And I am telling my own kids, Lets make these and give them to each other for Christmas. I want every one of them.

Great Video of Emergency Prep ideas

Wow, Lana Richardson has some great ideas of stuff to be aware of in a disaster! This is an hour long, so let it play while you are doing dishes or paying bills or something. It is well worth watching. I took 6 pages of notes!

http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6255&Itemid=200049

Evacuation- Some tips

http://blog.totallyready.com/survivor-stories-emergency-preparedness-emergency-management/05/26/

I took this whole quote from the May 5, 2010 blog post of Totally Ready. I love to read that blog because she constantly talks about things we should be thinking about for emergencies.

It was interesting what things this woman did and did not remember to take when she evacuated from the San Diego fires two years ago.

"We had a half hour notice to evacuate. A friend called when he was called by a friend who received a reverse 9-1-1 call. My initial thought was, this is a drill, we’ll be back tonight, we’ll be the only ones on the road. All of these assumptions were wrong. My husband grabbed the kids and told me to grab a few things. What did I grab? Makeup! Of course when he came in and saw me I woke up to the important things. We ended up taking three days worth of clothes, photo albums, camera, computer, file documents, journals, scriptures, 72-hour kits, and the kids each picked one toy. There was no forethought; I just grabbed what I could, what was visible.

I wish I had taken....."

And you'll have to go to the blog to read the rest.

Rolling Can Storage

Here is a video of a clever way a woman made a storage unit that fits behind her sofa. She made it from an old dresser, and put in rolling shelves for canned food storage.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCnXfO7YMfk&feature=related

(Added July 19, 2010: I just found out this video was made by my friend K. J. of the Green Level Ward! I had no idea I was watching a video made in my own town!)

Thinking of Hurricane Season

Tuesday morning I was walking with Patti, and we were reminiscing about Hurricane Fran, which was our last big hurricane here in the Raleigh area, in September 1996. She was out of electricity for nine days, I was only out for one day. There were fallen trees blocking all the roads. We knew of plenty of people with trees on their house or car. Stores and businesses were closed.

I said to Patti, "If we found out there was a big hurricane heading straight for us right now, what would you do to prepare?"

And we both started brainstorming.

(Remember, we both already have lots of food and water storage, so these are just extra things we would do.)

(For those of you who have moved here since 1996, and have no idea what to do to prepare for a hurricane, pay close attention.)

Here is the list we came up with:

Buy another propane tank for the grill. (For cooking outdoors.)

Do all the laundry. (You may be out of electricity for awhile.)

Fill up all the spaces in my freezer with 2-liter bottles full of water. (A full freezer stays frozen longer. And ice is always handy when the power is out.)

Fill up all the cars with gasoline. (Gas stations can't function without electricity. Also, if there is a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, the refineries might be nonfunctional for weeks.)

Get the bikes repaired. (It is good to have another form of transportation if gasoline is unavailable.)

Get sandbags. (I'm going to get 4 bags of playground sand from Home Depot, to put across my front door. During Fran, we had 9 inches of rain in one day. I think my front door is low enough that I fear some water is going to come in there if the water can't drain from my front yard fast enough.)

Obtain a battery or solar radio, buy a replacement for my little portable TV. (We threw it away because it was analog. We loved that TV during hurricanes because we could plug it into the car and find out what was happening. So now we need a digital TV with an antenna.)

Texting

I just read a really good book, Survival: How a Culture of Preparedness Can Save You and Your Family From Disasters by Lt. General Russel L. Honore' (U.S. Army, retired). He was the commander of Joint Task Force- Katrina, the officer on the ground in charge of all active-duty military forces sent to Louisiana and Mississippi.

At the end of every chapter he gave ten- to- twenty "Lessons Learned for Building a Culture of Preparedness."

One of the tips that I got from the book was to teach myself to send and receive text messages on my cell phone.

"Text messages were still working for many people even though the cell towers were down. There were a few cell towers out there somewhere with just a hint of life in them. They had enough power to enable people to send text messages.

Anyone who has a cell phone needs to know how to send text messages in the event of an emergency. A text message is a burst transmission and uses only a fraction of a signal whereas a voice call will eat up a lot of bandwidth.

It is especially important for the elderly or the disabled who live in areas prone to hurricane, floods, earthquakes, or wildfires to have a cell phone and be able to send text messages. Learning that simple skill could mean the difference between life and death. " page 117

"Shortly after our arrival in New Orleans, my headquarters in Atlanta began receiving text messages from people trapped in their homes...These people would send a text message to a friend who would forward it to the Times-Picayune, which would then send the message on to First Army headquarters. The message would be sent from there to the Coast Guard search-and-rescue officials with information about where these people were... " page 116.

(Not from the book) I was also thinking about communicating in a disaster where there are no cell towers left. I am really proud of my friend Patti, who just got her Ham Radio license. I am definitely planning to take that training someday and get my license too.

Washing Machine for Emergencies

I just bought this emergency washing machine from Emergency Essentials. It cost $14.95.

It looks a little like a plunger. (In fact, some survivalist books say you can use a clean plunger. But this one has been engineered to do a better job on clothing- see the grill? That keeps the clothes from getting sucked up into the plunger, and creates a vacuum to pull the water through the clothing better.)

You take a 5 gallon bucket and cut a hole in the lid for the handle to stick through. Put water and some laundry detergent in the bucket with the clothing, and beat the clothing like you are churning butter. (If you don't have a lid with a hole in it, you can churn it without a lid, but you have to be more careful not to slosh the water.)

I think it looks like it would do a better job than scrubbing on a washboard, which some of my boys had to do on their missions.

Increasing in Frequency

From an article written by E. Dale LeBaron "The Savior's Ministry to the Nephites: A Millenial Prototype"

"Why will many be unprepared for these events? Because they ignore the prophets and because the destructive events, while they increase in frequency and power, blend together, and little regard is given to them. In October 1992 general conference, Elder M. Russell Ballard said, "Recently, I read a newspaper article that cited statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey indicating that earthquakes around the world are increasing in frequency and intensity...."

(still quoting Ballard) "According to this article, only two major earthquakes---earthquakes measuring at least 6 on the Richter Scale---occurred during the 1920's. In the 1930's the number increased to five, then decreased to four during the 1940's. But in the 1950's nine major earthquakes occurred, followed by fifteen during the 1960's, forty-six during the 1970's, and fifty-two during the 1980's. [Note this was given in October 1992.] Already, almost as many major earthquakes have occurred during the 1990's as during the entire decade of the 1980's." (close quote Ballard)

"In light of this tremendous increase in one of the signs of the times, are people flooding to their churches...? Hardly. Why not? Nearly thirty-five years ago...President Joseph Fielding Smith testified, "The words of the prophets are rapidly being fulfilled, but it is done on such natural principles that most of us fail to see it."


(p. 5-6, Transcript, F.A.R.M.S. Book of Mormon Lecture Series, (c) 1995 Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies)

A Survival Guide to Catastrophe

Months ago, I gave a book review of The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why. © 2008 by Amanda Ripley. A couple of days ago, I was reading something on the internet and they had a link to an article she wrote. This article from Time magazine, May 29, 2008, contains some of the best parts of the book. (Who survived when a ferry sank, who survived in a restaurant fire, and who survived in the World Trade Center.) Read it and get some good ideas!


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1810315-1,00.html


To learn more about survival skills in a disaster, go to www.TheUnthinkable.com

Making Cheese

I read "Totally Ready" on Feb. 18, and her post was all about making cheese. It had the recipe and the instructions for making a cheese press. I was fascinated with the idea, although it seems really time consuming.

Click on her blog on Feb. 18 "Say Cheese...Yummy" and scroll down and look at the cheese press, it would be pretty easy to make. But I guess I would have to have access to a cow to get some milk.

I am hoping that someday I have all these useful contraptions: a cheese press, an alfalfa sprouter, a solar oven, a woodburning stove, etc.

When Shall These Things Be?- Ballard Ensign Dec 1996

M. Russell Ballard, “‘When Shall These Things Be?’,” Ensign, Dec 1996, 56

http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=0830dbdcc370c010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

These are the last days. As foretold by God’s holy prophets since the world began, they are challenging times, and they are going to become even more challenging.

Some of these things seem to be occurring with ever-increasing regularity. If we measured the natural disasters that have occurred in the world during the past 10 years and plotted that year by year, we would see an acceleration. The earth is rumbling, and earthquakes are occurring in “divers places.” Human nature being what it is, we don’t normally pay much attention to these natural phenomena until they happen close to where we are living. But when we contemplate what has happened during the past decade, not only with earthquakes but also with regard to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and the like, we see an accelerating pattern.

Can we use this scientific data to extrapolate that the Second Coming is likely to occur during the next few years, or the next decade, or the next century? Not really. I am called as one of the Apostles to be a special witness of Christ in these exciting, trying times, and I do not know when He is going to come again. As far as I know, none of my brethren in the Quorum of the Twelve or even in the First Presidency knows. And I would humbly suggest that if we do not know, then nobody knows, no matter how compelling their arguments or how reasonable their calculations. The Savior said that “of that day, and hour, no one knoweth; no, not the angels of God in heaven, but my Father only” (JST, Matt. 1:40).