PONDERIZE PLAN B

A MESSAGE FROM OUR EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COORDINATOR

I'm Paul Brown, President Kathryn Brown's sidekick and the Ward Emergency

Preparedness Coordinator. I miss seeing all of you at our weekly meetings during

the pandemic.

So, let's think about emergency preparedness. Before your eyes glaze over,

you're already thinking about it. Daily. When you fasten your seat belt, you're

taking an action to mitigate something that you don't want to happen. Do you

have a flashlight in your house? You're realizing that the electricity won't always

be available. Or a first aid kit? You're not planning on hurting yourself, but

realizing that - well - things happen.

I've had to throw out tons of stored wheat from my parents' basement. They were

told that one can live on stored wheat, powdered milk, and salt. I've not heard

about storing 2 years worth of food for a long time. (And it’s not just about wheat:

eating only whole wheat bread would get wearying very quickly. If you're going to

store food, store what you'll want to eat.) Rather, we're asked to put together a kit

that contains things we'll want for a 72- or 96-hour period.

To my thinking, both the stored food and the 72-hour kits have their place: the

stored food is preparation for an interruption in our food supply chain (and

assumes you can remain in your house to grind the wheat into flour and bake

your bread). The 72-hour kit is something you take with you if you can't remain in

your housing - like after an earthquake or in advance of a wildfire.

We make plans all of the time. Things we want to happen are our Plan A.

Thinking about emergency preparedness is a start on Plan B: what we will do if

Plan A doesn't work out.

Ponderize Plan B a little this week.