Safety Fourth

Frozen ponds and lakes have provided affordable entertainment to families for generations.  Tragically, every year basic ice safety rules are ignored resulting in people falling through the ice, sometimes with fatal results.  It is often difficult to gauge the thickness of ice.  Typically, clear blue ice is the strongest, white “milky” ice is half as strong, and grey ice indicates the unsafe presence of water.  The only sure way to know the thickness is by measuring it or drilling through the surface in several locations.  The ice should be at least 4” thick or walking or skating alone, and 6” thick for group activities or games.  Even if the ice seems safe to go on, have an emergency plan and basic life saving tools on hand.  If you have any doubts about the safety of the ice, don’t go on it.

There are many situations that can prompt a local or larger emergency.  The first that spring to mind are caused by severe weather, hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, heat waves and cold snaps.  As sure as God made little green apples we know that throughout the US there will be flooding in one region or another.  It will be soon – the only question is where.
Chemical spills from trains or trucks can require that you evacuate your home suddenly as can other circumstances that can arise from some form or transport accident by air, sea, rail or road). Oil spills can poison miles of coast line.

As I write this – fires are raging out of control in Southern California. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.  And that’s just brush and forest fires- what about the thousands of accidental fires in homes and other occupied building that occur every day.
What if we had another influenza pandemic, something that lurks more prominently in the minds of many since the many recent outbreaks of bird flu – all over the world.
What about nuclear accidents? Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are not the end. It will happen again.

So far, I’ve only mentioned acts of nature and negligence.  The world is a darker place than it used to be and horrific emergencies can and are caused by the deliberate acts of criminals.  There can be explosions that shut down major urban systems – sucking every ounce of capacity from local emergency systems. Let’s stop short of deliberate acts of biological and chemical sabotage.

My point with all this is that we totally take for granted the ability of our systems and our government to protect and care for us and in doing so, we have, at least mentally, shifted a responsibility over to others which is intrinsically ours.  It is the responsibility of caring for ourselves, our dependents, our homes and our possessions in the event of an emergency, big, small or catastrophic.

Honestly, I’m as guilty as the next person, probably because out of sight is out of mind (well, mine at least)  When it comes to planning to live for a few days or even longer, without all the conveniences we take for granted  most of us don’t have a clue where to start.

There are two things you can have that will make a huge difference on your family’s ability to cope with any disaster. - A family emergency plan and a family emergency kit.

Now would be a pretty good time to think about getting that together -  more to come on this subject