la_bebe member for 24 weeks 4 days Send a message

Yesterday I was at work, standing by the soda fountain when all of a sudden I felt the floor under my feet moving. First I thought "I'm gonna faint!" but I looked around and saw my coworkers holding onto the wall... It was an earthquake! 5.8 at around 11:45 a.m. with epicenter in Chino Hills, CA.

For the rest of the day, that's all you could see on the news. Everybody was talking about it, and it made me think how unprepared we are for an emergency situation. Thank god it was nothing to worry about, So far there is no injuries reported, only minimal material losses, but everybody was freaking out like it was the "big one", where the "San Andreas fault" is supposed to separate california from the rest of the american land.

I'm glad to have been there to know what to expect when something like that happens. The first thing they ask you to do is stay calmed, find a safe place to be, and do not block the phone lines by calling every single person you know and their mothers! And what did everybody do? The complete opposite! Most customers at the restaurant didn't finish their meals because they were too busy trying to make way through an already oversaturated phone system that didn't work properly for like 2 hours. I understand their concern and the need of knowing their loved ones are ok, but if you think about it, if your loved ones are in danger, a phone call from you is not gonna make it better, and you might be blocking their phone when they may need it to call 911. I'm kind of in the middle here, because of course I wanted to call my daughter's school and make sure everything was ok, but I believe they have better emergency drills than any of the adults I was around.

Anyway, all this made me think. I don't have any emergency supplies, not even a first aid kit! That is so wrong and I'm very ashamed of it. So today (Like most people around here) I'm gonna dedicate myself to put one together. There is this company that sells you pre-packaged emergency kits (that didn't have a moment to sit down last night because the demand was overwhelming...) but I'm thinking I'll custom make my own.

I would really like to know how many of you are prepared and how. It would give me some ideas of what to put in my emergency bucket.