Tenafly Twitters |

Are you ready for the EOTD? (Emergency of the Day) You should always have on hand:

• cash
• nonperishable food for at least 3 days (consider increasing it to a week at the moment). This stash should include things like cans of tuna or chicken, peanut butter, pasta or rice if you can cook them on your outdoor grill, Parmalat or dry milk, coffee or tea, toilet paper, cereal. – Basically enough food so that you can feed your family without them killing you because they hate the selection. Don’t forget petfood.
• Drinking water for 3 days.
• Batteries & full propane tank for above-mentioned grill.

Put a clear label in your pantry that indicates the kids are not suppose to use your emergency supplies without you knowing about it.

Include donate-to-food-pantry dates (2 moths before expiration) for things you have for emergencies but don’t really eat (lentils in our case.)

Reduce neighborhood stress- offer to go shopping for an elderly neighbor who doesn’t want to risk exposure but doesn’t have  staples onhand.

Talk now about forming buying buddy groups. If travel were restricted in any emergency think about how you’d send one person out to shop for several families. Not only would you reduce exposure for the families staying home, fewer people in the store mean fewer ways to spread germs.

We live in a section of the country with excellent emergency preparedness preparation.  But things happen. You should always be able to take care of your family without assistance for several days.

Remember Floyd?  All the critical public services were housed in nice, water-tight facilities until one hapless employee went out a back door to smoke. Unfortueately the back entrance was flooded and shortly thereafter the rest of the facility was too. ATMs were out for days.