Monday, April 12, 2010

Are We Ready for an Emergency

Tonight, for Family Home Evening we had a test run to see if we are prepared. It all started at dinner. I didn't cook anything and when I called everyone to the table to eat, John turned the power out in the kitchen and the weather turned out nicely. The wind was blowing and the dark black rain clouds were blowing in and then the power went out. The kids are scared and then John comes in and says"I think we're having a earthquake, quick get under the table." So we all gather under the table, (Abigail is now crying hysterically) and we talk about what to do in an earthquake. Then we had everyone go to their rooms to pretend to sleep and then John pushes the fire alarm. We all exit the house and go to our family meeting point. Now everyone is having fun. Then John shows us how to shut off the gas and water.

Now comes the fun part. Because we have had an emergency we need to pull out our 72 hour kits and eat dinner from this. Well, I filled our 72 hour kits 4 year ago and after we got all the food out, everything was expired! (ha, ha,) Good thing we did this now and not when there was a real emergency. So we ended up throwing almost everything away and had french toast for dinner.

But we learned a few things:

1. Don't store things that expire in the same year you buy them.
2. Store things that you really will eat (we had things that were on the list that nobody like)
3. Rotate the food yearly so when a disaster strikes you have fresh food.
4. Put your food in a ziploc bag for easier rotation. (I had sealed our kits in mylar bags, but you can't rotate food in and out of them. If they were in a ziploc bag I could rotate things easier.)

So now I will go buy new food for our 72 hour kits and hopefully remember to rotate it more often.

It was a pretty good FHE and all the kids learned a few things.

6 comments:

The Richards family said...

Good idea!! I remeber we had a FHE on I guess prepardness and we learned how to turn of the water. Good thing cuz the next day we had a horrible water leak and we all new how to turn of the water!! Now I need to check my 72 hour kits... thanks

Dallin and Katie said...

What a good idea. I'll have to try that with my family, except we don't even have the 72 hour kits.

Krystal said...

I know a couple families who rotate their food every conference. They just snack on the goodies and replace everything while they watch the sessions. It's a good way to remember rotation. You can also replace your smoke detector batteries every conference too!

Gilbrides said...

I bet Abigail will never forget that FHE :) That's a great idea! I think I'll have to do those things myself!

Mary Jo said...

Fabulous idea - we definitely need to rotate ours. It was a great night for the practice trial run. We stood in the freezing rain and watched Dallen play a soccer game. Your FHE sounds a lot more fun and warm!

NatBug said...

What a great activity for FHE. We will have to get those kinds of things together and do a practice of our own!

Jacob and Joshua

Jacob and Joshua
Ready to tear it up

Grandpa helping Jacob shoot

Grandpa helping Jacob shoot

Grandpa helping Joshua shoot

Grandpa helping Joshua shoot

Jacob ready to shoot

Jacob ready to shoot
Everybody duck!

Dad and Joshua

Dad and Joshua