By Ourselves, For Ourselves: Part 5

We have, in this series, been talking about getting yourself, your family and your home ready for a semi extensive bunkering during difficult times, such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Today, were going to deviate from this line of thinking a bit.

You aren’t always at home. You go to work, to the store, to the homes of friends and relatives, etc and you will need a plan for if you get caught away from your home in a natural disaster (or terrorist attack) so that you can get back to your home, even if it only going to serve as a supply base.

Remember, your vehicle is an extension of your home, legally, in most states. George Carlin has an entire skit on versions of your stuff? He uses vacations as his example.

So let’s just say that you’re at your local hobby shop BSing the Saturday afternoon away, as is your wont.

Mother Nature acts up and you are now away from home during and after an earthquake of decent magnitude. Your wife and kids are at home, 20 minutes away (or at least you’re pretty sure they are). But we’ll get to that in a minute.

If your hobby shop is a gun store then you are probably in pretty good shape. If you’re known well enough there, the owner may even lend you whatever you need in the way of firearms and ammunition to get home (this is why the gun shop is better than the tackle shop).

However, you may be at the computer store or the auto shop or the coffee shop, in which case you’re going to have to “run what you brung”. So let’s discuss this.

Wherever I go, I have my 1911 with 8+1 rounds and another pair of 8 round mags on my person for a total of 25 rounds. Good enough for stopping a punk robbing a 7-11, but not ideal for getting your backside home through urban unrest.

Remember, all a pistol should be used for is fighting your way to your rifle. So in my truck I have another 50 rounds of 45ACP and an SKS with 200 rounds.

While there are risks with keeping a firearm in you vehicle, with theft being the largest, there are a number of ways to keep a long gun in your vehicle safely if you do decide to do this. Luckily, all I have to do in Washington is store it locked and unloaded in a case or in a part of the vehicle separate from the passenger cabin. Check with your local and state statutes about the storage of firearms in vehicles before you go trying this.

The easiest precautions are the ones that you should already be doing: Parking your vehicle in busy, well lit and open areas and also keeping the firearm out of sight from potential thieves such as in the trunk or hatchback of you car or behind the seats of your truck.

You will want to keep the long gun in a hard shelled, locking case and the bigger the case the better. Chain it down if you have to. If the thief has to not only get this big thing out of your vehicle and then haul it around before he can get it to his place and then try to cut it open, he may be less inclined to take it. Another thing you can do is to cut the carry handles off. You won’t be carrying this anywhere, so you don’t need them, and it will make the case harder for the thief to heft around.

You don’t need to keep a full-on battle rifle in your vehicle. Most likely, a carbine will do just fine. If the S does seriously HTF and you are needing to fight your way home, imagine trying to accurately fire an HK91, an M1A or a Garand and drive at the same time. Forearm in the crook of the elbow, steering with the left hand, loading stripper clips into the SKS with the right hand is quite enough for me to accomplish, TYVM.

But that is the drive home, and it assumes that your car isn’t damaged in the disaster.
So let’s look at the rest of the gear you should keep in the car.

First up, for the scenario above you will need a first aid kit, not only for yourself, but also for folks who are in the general vicinity. You will want a kit that will minimally cover ten people. Burns, cuts and broken bones will be your most frequently found wounds in a disaster scenario and you should supply your kit accordingly.

Next, other things you should already have in your vehicle: Emergency kits of tools and parts for minor vehicle repairs, blankets, sources of light and heat, food, water and toiletries. For the last five supplies, you should plan on at least three days for yourself so as to have enough for any extra people you might have with you at any given time.

Another good thing to have with you, especially if your vehicle is too damaged to get you home, is a “Walking Bag”. I know that some of you have to wear “Office Appropriate” clothes to work. Walking home in patent leather shoes is going to suck, so the most important things are a pair of comfortable shoes and good socks. A good pair of pants and a seasonal appropriate coat and shirt are also not a bad idea to keep in there. Leave whatever you change out of with your vehicle or in your office, they are dead weight and you can get/replace them later. Wash then once a month (when you rotate your water) so that they aren’t repulsive when you need to put them on.

Except for the car parts and tools, all of this kit should be kept in a backpack, messenger bag or some other easily shouldered baggage so that you can carry other items with your hands.

Once you’ve done all you can, get the hell out of there and get home.

There are two reasons I am writing about treating the wounded and not hauling ass immediately after a disaster:

1. In Washington we have a Good Samaritan law that mandates you take care of what you can and/or get help, and also protects you from legal action provided you were acting in good faith. Most folks assume this only applies to car accidents, and they’d be wrong (though aside from this post, I don‘t know how the authorities would prove I had First Aid supplies in my truck).

2. If you are at one of your favorite hangouts, it would be bad form to leave without helping.

Check your local statutes to see if you have laws such as this too, as you don’t want to get pinched by the nanny-staters afterwards. I do not believe that said law mandates that I have to give wounded individuals a ride to the hospital, though with the massive damage in the area probably having the local emergency services tied down or bottled up, and depending on the severity of the injuries and how well you know the injured person, you may consider this also.

On your way home:

As you make your way through the damage you should try to get in touch of those at your house. If everything is well at home base, no damage, no one running around looting the neighborhood as of yet, then you can give your ETA, instructions for what you want those there to do while you make your way home, and just focus on just getting there. The previously mentioned 20 minutes could now take 10 hours.

From things falling across the roadways (buildings, trees, power lines, etc) to the roads cracking in the event of a really large quake (or elevated roadways collapsing as during the Northridge Quake), your trip home could be quite the adventure.

One of the downsides to living in a coastal state is the possibility of tsunamis. And even if you don’t have to worry about the ocean coming up and swallowing parts of the landscape, if you have rivers and or large lakes, you still have to worry about destruction from those bodies of water.

During and after an earthquake rivers will most likely flow in the wrong direction, which will cause a river-based tsunami that can not only take out people and structures alongside the river, but also any and all bridges built across them.

Large lakes may also buck up during natural disasters and grab things they shouldn’t. Or conversely, they may drain into where they shouldn’t normally be, causing the same damage as a reversed river.

Seattle has the added disadvantage of multiple bridges which float across lakes. These are shut down during our yearly winter windstorms out of the fear that they’ll break apart and sink, or even worse, float around the lake and smash into homes and business built on the lake.

Make sure to always keep a decent amount of gas in your vehicle. The gas pumps probably won’t work, so it’ll be too late to get gas afterwards. I try to not let mine get below ½, though sometimes I fail at this.

And what if no one answers the home phone or the phone system is down? If you have mobile phones try them. Almost all the service providers will work with each other’s towers, so while you may have to switch to roaming, the cost of the call shouldn’t be your first worry.

Either way, your number one priority is to get home. Your number two priority is to make contact with your people. Hopefully you will succeed at the second one before the first and it will not take you too much longer than usual to get there.

But if you succeed at getting home first, hopefully the structure is intact and you are able to live in it and hopefully that is where your people are.

If not, you then have to decide what you are going to do.

This is all going to depend on you and how well you have your people set up beforehand.

You should have some system set up telling the household where everyone is at. It can be a peg board or a dry erase board on the refrigerator, it doesn’t matter so long as it accurately communicates. In the case of children being at their friends houses, hopefully you have multiple contact numbers for the other parents. Again, land lines will probably be down. Get mobile numbers.

In the case of them being in a public place, like “The Mall“, you need to have meeting points set up beforehand. If they know to be at “the southeast corner” and they’re both uninjured and the least bit intelligent, that is where they will be, probably shaken up and waiting for you.

In the case of a near adult child who drives or a significant other, hopefully they are getting themselves home. If you still cannot get in touch with them then you have to decide if and/or how long you are going to wait before going out and looking for them.

This is where the “Neighbor Agreement” we spoke of last week will come in handy. They can watch your place while you’re out looking for your people (and their people too).

If you do decide that you are going to go out, make sure to arm yourself appropriately, and if you have used any of the previous mentioned supplies, restock your vehicle.

Even more importantly, grab one of the two way radios from your SHTF bins and take it with you. Leave a message very prominently for your people in case they come home while you are out. Tell them to use the handheld to let you know they are home so that you can stop looking for them.

You will be looking for your people walking and also their car. Make sure you check likely parking lots and keep your eyes open for it in oncoming traffic. Hopefully, they will be looking for you as well.

Other than a homing beacon inserted into one of your loved ones orifices, that is about all you can do in this situation.

Please re-read this and count the times I used the word “Hopefully”. There is almost no amount of planning you can go through for this situation where you will be able to not have to “hope” something is ok.

But with prior planning, you can lower the necessity.

If you have any other ideas or any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section. I know I didn’t think of everything.

That is why we are doing this now instead of later.

I’ll be back next week with First Aid Kits.