Were we well prepared? I hadn’t put my wallet, keys etc. in a good place as I suggested here. But then the first quake didn’t do us any damage that morning. We had time to prepare for aftershocks. Of course we had no idea that one of them would hit us so much harder than the first one. It was three hours after the first. We were outside when the worse one hit, so we missed the “fun” of having everything fall over on us.

In terms of being ready to move out of our house instantly, we were somewhat there. We had the best earthquake insurance our company offered, an earthquake kit where we could get to it, we had our water heater properly tied to the wall, we knew what to do with the gas supply, and so on.

It was still an eye-opener. I believe there are two kinds of Californians with respect to earthquakes: those who laugh about them, and those who have been through a real one. Not just a 5-point-something quake, but one that does real damage. We were prepared logistically but it still shook us up, metaphorically as well as figuratively.

How could we have been better prepared? I don’t know, except that I think the more you decide in advance to help others after a disaster, the better you’ll come through it yourself. We had a nine-month-old baby; that made it more complicated. But I still could have done better at helping others in the community. It would have done them and me good.

Thanks for checking the blog and keep up the good work!

Kudos to you for having such a good understanding of local threats. It’s interesting to hear you mention pandemic flu and hurricanes since they are on such opposite ends of the threat spectrum, a great example of threat awareness.

The scope of the plan is to prepare sufficient supply of food, water for a year. I also own a piece of land so I’ll have vegetable garden there, besides that food stock. I will dig a large underground shelter (the max I can build is 25 sq m (270 sq ft)) for storing the food and for any other emergency to shelter me and my family.

I will also make some energy sources, like sollar heat collectors, small combined heat and power plant with wood gasifier and internal combustion engine, wind turbine, stuff like that.