Earthquake Prep at Home – Supplies

Now that you have the locations of your Shut offs and your escape routes on a drawing, it is now time to put together standard safety equipment you should have in your house as well as a Disaster Preparedness kit.

Standard Safety Equipment

You should look into a residential fire extinguisher for your home and label the location on your plan.

You should also have Smoke Detectors and Carbon Monoxide Detectors throughout your house. The batteries in these should be checked yearly and they should be replaced every 10 years (or as per the manufacturers recommendations).

A handy tool box is always helpful, with a hammer, screwdrivers, tape measure, wrenches (you will need this to shut off your gas), safety glasses, gloves, flashlight, and duct tape. (You can never go wrong by having duct tape)

First Aid Kit with bandages and disinfectant is crucial.

Disaster Preparedness Kit

You should also mark the location of your Disaster Preparedness Supplies on your plan.

Items you should have in your Disaster Preparedness Kit at a minimum should have the following:

  • 72 hours of water
  • 72 hours of food
  • Emergency blanket
  • Hooded poncho
  • First aid kit
  • Emergency radio
  • Tissue pack
  • Dust masks
  • LED Flash light
  • Emergency whistle
This particular kit is available from a company called 72Hours. You can find them at https://72Hours.ca

If you have further ideas let me know and we can add them to this post.

Earthquake Prep at home – Basics

Firstly you should look around your house and find the utility shut off for your home. I.e. Your Hydro shut Off and label it with something like this

This should be at your main Electrical Breaker Panel and is usually the largest Breaker Switch on the panel, located by itself at the bottom or the top.

Next you need to find your Natural Gas or Heating Fuel shutoff (I.e. Propane, Oil, Natural Gas, etc.) This is usually located at the Gas Utility Meter, and you want to label the valve closest to the street.

You should label the Shutoff Valve (3)

Next you want to find your Water Line Shut off Valves and label it appropriately.

Here’s a little video to help you find your homes water service valve.

After you have found and labeled these locations, you should probably draw up a floor plan to help others find them in the future. It would also be helpful to label any disaster escape routes, fire extinguisher locations and disaster supply locations as well. (I will discuss these on my next post.)

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