Are You Prepared?

It's been blissfully gorgeous weather here the last few days. Saturday started and ended with torrential rain, but Sunday brought the most perfect weather and a gorgeous 21 degrees. Again today, sunshine and 19 degrees.

As it is the chores have been accumulating it was time to hit them head on which we did on Sunday. Gardening was done, the house windows were washed, and the big job which took the whole day - the garage was sorted out!

We wrote this post from exactly a year ago - Part Of Everyday Life? which detailed information on the very real threat of earthquakes here in NZ. We were shocked when the Household Emergeny Checklist sat in the mail box of everyone in NZ and upon us reading it further decided we needed to 'be prepared'.

I have always had a few concerns about the whole thing though. It's all well and good having a Survival Kit, but what happens to those who can't afford to put one together?

What would happen should there be such a disaster that the street we lived in had neighbours without food or water...and we were the only ones with a kit? Not many people could survive off that one kit.

Where do you store something like that so it remains safe and doesn't get damaged through such disaster? I know in our last house everything would have just slipped down the hillside.

Despite the concerns we always knew that us as a family should be prepared. So it may have taken over a year but we finally pulled it together. Everything we would need should there be a disaster - everything we would need to survive for the recommended 3 days (including one sneaky bottle of wine!)...

Of course we hope there will never be a 'big one'. But it seems that at this time of the year people start talking about it more. 21 years has past since the last major earthquake which was in Edgecumbe in 1987. People say we are on the brink of that 20 year fault line and it will be 'any day now'.

So how do you think you would manage? Do you have a Survival Kit? I know many of my kiwi friends who have never had one and don't plan to. Maybe it's just an expat thing, maybe we worry too much, or maybe there are things we don't know about...?

Either way, we are ready.