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Preparing for an Earthquake in a Small Community

As recent news stories have shown, earthquakes can happen anywhere, anytime and it is important to be prepared all year round. Those who live in small rural communities may need to be even more prepared than those in larger communities. It is important to make sure you have all the essential tools for surviving and enough food and water to last you up to a month if needed.

Living in a small rural community has the potential of leaving you stranded for a much longer period of time during a natural disaster such as an earthquake.  Small communities lack infrastructure such as hospitals, ambulance, fire, and other emergency response networks that are often more plentiful in high populated urban areas. Furthermore, people in rural areas cannot rely on assistance and help from neighbours due to the fact that they are often spread out over greater areas with much smaller populations.

Depending on where you live it may take several days or even weeks for emergency response teams to reach your community. There are things you will need to make sure you and your family are safe and have enough food and water.  It is impossible to predict when an earthquake might strike and where you or your family will be at that time. If you are lucky enough to all be at home during such an occurance, it might be a good idea to have an earthquake kit in more than one area of the house. Having a kit upstairs in a hall closet or bedroom and one downstairs in the basement might save you from trekking through parts of your house that may not be sound if things have shifted. Having a kit that isn’t accessible could mean the difference between life or death.

Some essential s you will need in order to make sure you are secure in your small community include things like:

        Flashlights with extra batteries (or hand-wound flashlights)

        Food and water for up to a month

        Radio with batteries (or hand-wound radio)

        First aid kit

        Candles

        Ponchos

        Tools (axe, knife, saw, hammer, gloves, crowbar)

        Blankets

        Camping stove and propane

Just having small amounts of these supplies may not be enough. If you are living in a hard to reach area you will need your supplies to last you weeks instead of days. For example, consider how much water and food a person needs to survive for one day. Being shut off for several weeks means that you will need to have large amounts of water and food on hand to last each person several weeks until help can reach you. It is important to be prepared and keep things like clean water, or water purifications tablets, and freeze-dried food on hand at all times to help you while you wait for help to arrive.

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