Urban GO! Bag Pack Lists

Southern Alberta - Foothills and Rockies

Time to share more lessons learned from the 2013 Southern Alberta Floods. This time, it is in regards to what items to pack in your GO! Bag. Despite dystopian fantasies of TEOTWAWKI or WROL; most evacuations faced by the majority of the population will be relatively short in duration and you will return home, at some point. To this end, a packing list that reflects this reality should be published.

In my book, The G.O.O.D. Plan - Get Out Of Dodge; I am as guilty as many other writers of emergency preparedness topics, I too made many of my lists based on worse-case scenarios. This was not done with evil intent; merely, to be ready for the darkest days. However, when evacuated due to the flood waters of 2013 we learned that having at least one outfit for work would have been an important item to include in the GO! Bag. Not all emergency events result in your place of employment being closed for the duration of your evacuation. Yet, when you are evacuated you cannot just swing by your home to collect clothes for work. 

These updated packing lists reflect that many folks will be evacuated for normal events - floods, fires, gas leaks or power outages. The evacuations may impact where you live but not necessarily where you work. Further, if these items are packed in a rolling suitcase (carry-on sized) or in a daypack; whether you are evacuating or just rushing to the airport for a weekend get-away being pre-packed will come in handy most days. 

The purpose of a GO! Bag was never to burden families with excessive financial costs to be ready to go. A spare suitcase, daypack or duffle bag with enough clothes and basic items to give you a starting point if you were evacuated and all you had time to do was grab one item as you departed your home in the event of an emergency. When you speak with those who have lost everything when they fled their home during any emergency event, the one common point you hear is, "I wish I had something that was mine." and "I wish we could have saved at least some of our photographs." With high capacity USB drives or hard drives, entire photo collections can be stored digitally, as well as, copies of all important family documents - birth certificates, passports, driver's licenses, diplomas and insurance documents. Starting over from absolutely nothing is very difficult. This challenge can be lessened by keeping a GO! Bag ready packed. 

Yours in Preparedness!

V.A.M.

Use in combination with the Priority Evacuation Checklist: Evac List