As I said before, single parents aren’t immune to emergencies. Apparently, every spring, someone sets fire to the field across the street from our new house. We didn’t know that when we bought our house, and though it wouldn’t have changed our minds, at least we would have been forewarned.
A couple of weeks ago, my brother needed a ride to work, but I told him he needed to wait while I threw in a load of laundry. When we stepped out the back door, we both immediately smelled smoke, if I wouldn’t have thrown in that load, we wouldn’t have caught it. We started looking around and found it over across the street in the field. We came back in and my brother called the fire department. Then went back outside to keep an eye on it. When the wind blew, the flames shot 15 feet high, and it could have decided to jump across the street at any point in time. We decided it best not to leave until the fire was under control, because that would leave my mom and Jonathan alone. If they needed to evacuate, we needed to be there.
I always felt bad for the people I saw on TV evacuating from their homes with the the fire right behind, but I never thought it would come that close to being me. Now, because of my support network, if we had to evacuate I know that we have places we can go, both animals and people. However, I can not say that I am prepared or that I have even started to prepare. I have everything we would need, but I definitely don’t have them prepared to go in case of an emergency. If an emergency ever hit, the stress would be so high, I would forget where over half of it is.
That is why everyone, including single parents, should be prepared in case of an emergency. Everyone reacts differently to stress, but anyway you look at it stress is stress, and the effects aren’t positive. Minimizing the stress by being prepared for when it hits is going to be your safest route, especially for a single parent.
Trust me, I know the feeling of “It’ll never happen to me,” from experience. Thinking this way does not make it true though, it only makes you unprepared for when it does happen. FlyLady has 11 Points to Preparedness for Evacuation that is a good general list of items you should have ready in case of an emergency. Miriam also has a couple of lists that you can use to pack an emergency kit listed here, and how to go about doing it so you don’t get over whelmed.
Tools You Need in an Emergency will help you think of things you wouldn’t normally think about when preparing you emergency kit.