Preparing for an Earthquake (or Russia Hacking on our Electrical Grid)
The topic of preparedness has come up three times in the last week—once from Liz Gillette, one of our advisors, once from my sister and once from a client. When you hear a common theme like this, it’s worth paying attention! Living in sunny California, we need to prepare for earthquakes and we’d typically check the supplies annually, so it’s always a good reminder to make sure you’re prepared.
These are just a few of the areas to get sorted just in case of an earthquake or if the power grid was out for a while.
Cash If there’s no power, you’re unlikely to be able to use your credit card or go to an ATM. Have some cash on hand in a fire safe box at home in case you need to get additional supplies. It’s hard to say how much crisis cash you’d actually need—if you’re safe in your home and have all the supplies, gas, medications, etc. you need, it may not be as much, but if your home was inhabitable, you needed to buy other necessities or the length of the crisis was longer than expected, you’d be happy you had saved more. Build your crisis cash stash to $200 – $1,500 or so, and remember to get denominations of 10s and 20s rather than just 100 dollar bills.
Supplies Most earthquake emergency kits recommend keeping 3 days’ worth of food and water. But remember the Great Texas Freeze of 2021 was a power grid failure that left some Texans without electricity for 2 weeks and 3 days. We’ve all lived through the early days of the pandemic where people were hording supplies and I’m sure we all don’t want to go through that again! Remember all those items like medicines and toilet paper that were harder to come by and keep that as part of your emergency supplies as well.
Power With a loss of power, the next thing to do is to think about how you’ll heat your house, make food or keep your phones charged so you can communicate with your family, friends or needed resources. A generator might be a good idea depending on where you live and a power bank would be sufficient for keeping phones charged. As in any earthquake kit, keep a supply of batteries for flashlights and radios as well.
While I hope Russia hacking into our electrical grid doesn’t actually happen, preparing for emergencies such as power grids going down are important. Earthquakes happen and power grids failing happen—we’ve seen it. Protect yourself, your friends, family and community by thinking ahead and preparing for a crisis.
