Saturday, December 7, 2013

It is Up to You to Be Ready

Okay folks for years I've been urging people to be prepared...long before Ready.gov got on board. For too many people, the very idea of having more than a couple days' worth of food or having a stocked pantry is a joke to them. "Why clutter up my cupboards with food? I would rather have the latest and greatest, as-seen-on-tv cooking gadget that mixes, slices, dices, stirs, cooks and cleans itself all with the push of one button."

Well, duh? Have you looked outside? How many of those are the roads yesterday and today were out looking for that gallon of milk or loaf of bread they'd failed to pick up on Thursday? Even worse, how many were looking for an entire meal at McDonalds or a cup of coffee at Starbucks? Really???

A few years ago a friend in Kentucky went through 30 days without power after a terrible ice storm brought down power lines and trees throughout the entire region. Even when stores were finally able to open, it was cash on the barrelhead because there was no power to run the registers or ATMs.

She was fine. She's one of those..."oh, gasp!" preppers. She had food that she'd canned and dehydrated. She had powdered milk. She knew how to bake bread, and did so all the time. She had feed for her animals. Even tho she had to haul water and thaw it on the woodstove when it froze in the buckets, she made it.

She also ended up being able to help her neighbors, although for the most part they were also common sense type rural folks, used to being self-sufficient.

How many in this part of Texas are without power due to this ice storm...which already heard called "Icemageddon"? How many have already died? What about the vehicle that spun out on the ice about 3am this morning and ended up in the water?

If you are not a first responder, a cop, medical person or some otherwise emergency support personnel,  stay home. Then when weather clears, consider looking ahead and doing a little stocking up for the next storm. Don't think it'll happen? Think again. All over the storms are getting worse and more deadly, and it is up to you (not the Government officials who are sitting nice and warm and well-fed in some safe place) to provide for your family.

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