How does emergency preparedness work?

In moments, a natural disaster can level cities, kill thousands and force survivors to scavenge through the rubble for supplies. In this podcast, Marshall discusses the importance of preparedness and the types of supplies you may need in an emergency.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Brainstuff from how Stuff Works dot com where
smart Happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how
does someone get ready for a disaster like the one
we saw in Japan? Or, to put it another way,

(00:20):
how does emergency preparedness work? If there's one thing we
saw with the earthquake in Japan, it's how quickly the
world can go from normal to complete disaster. After the
earthquakes and tsunami struck, many people in Japan were thrown
into quite primitive conditions. No electricity, no telephone service, no medicine,

(00:42):
no clean drinking water, and no shipments of food arriving
because the roads were gone. Hurricanes can bring the same
kind of destructive force across a wide area, and so
can volcanoes. If your city were to be struck with
a large scale disaster like this, would you and your
family be read need to handle it? That's where emergency

(01:02):
preparedness comes in. The basic idea is to have enough
supplies on hand so that your family can survive the
week or two of pandemonium that follows any major disaster.
One reason to be prepared is because it ensures the
survival and relative comfort of your family. The other reason
is because it makes things less chaotic for rescuers and

(01:24):
relief crews. If you are able to manage your life
without any help, it frees up rescue teams to handle
those who are truly in need of their help. So
what do you have on hand in an emergency? Perhaps
the most important thing is water. Human beings use a
lot of water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and even for
flushing the toilet. At a bare minimum, a person needs

(01:47):
about a gallon per day. You would like to have
at least enough water to handle three days, and a
week or two would be even better. If you have
four people in your family and you're planning for a
week of coverage, you need a minimum of twenty eight
gallons stored somewhere in your house, and it needs to
be in the right kind of package. Milk jugs of
water start leaking after a year or so, clear plastic

(02:11):
bottles won't. If there is a natural source of water nearby,
like a river or a lake, you can use it.
If you have a way to carry and sterilize the water.
You need any prescription medicines that are essential to your life,
as well as an adequate first aid kit. Because there
will be no electricity, you'll want to have a good
flashlight and fresh batteries, as well as a battery operated

(02:34):
radio to get information. Glow sticks are also nice to
have available. You need some food. Many people have enough
food in the pantry to handle a couple of days.
In a big disaster, you may want a week or
two of food on hand. Canned foods like soups and
other prepared foods, and dry foods like rice and pasta
are probably best for long term storage. Keep in mind

(02:57):
that you need a way to open the cans and
to the food, an old fashioned can opener and a
camp stover handy. It's nice to have some cash. With
the power out in the telephone system down, a t
m S and credit card machines are not going to
work for the same reason. Gas stations are not going
to be pumping gas either. If you have some advanced

(03:18):
warning of something like an approaching hurricane, filling up your
car's gas tank is a good move, and taking out
several hundred dollars in cash is also a smart thing
to do. And don't forget the little things. If you
run out of toilet paper, that is its own special disaster,
keep several packages of toilet paper in the back of
the bathroom cabinet just in case. Speaking of hurricanes, a

(03:41):
big tarp and some rope might be nice things to
have in the garage. If your roof gets damaged, you
may be able to cover the whole. If you want
to write out a disaster and style, an emergency generator
and enough gasoline to keep it running can be very
nice things to have with it. You can keep your
refrigerator running, provide lights at night, and so on. Having

(04:02):
a generator requires an extra level of discipline because gasoline
goes bad. If you're keeping gasoline in the garage for
the generator, you need to replace it on a regular schedule.
Full on disasters like the one that happened in Japan
don't occur very often, but when they do, it's nice
to be prepared so you can survive without undue hardship.

(04:25):
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