Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Hit by Reality

Last night soon after we went to bed we had a wee earthquake. Ben said he felt the house rolling, which turned out to be how the press described it. Me, I didn't feel it as much as wondered why the windows were rattling. I suspect it was Mag 3 at best here; it was a 7 where it happened but around 350 meters deep in the sea, so not a big deal on the ground, even though it was felt in about three-quarters of New Zealand.

While turning on the TV, radio, laptop and Ben's work smartphone, we assembled an evac pack, and regretted not having done it in spite of everything happening in Christchurch and Japan, and always talking about it. We always had a pack in Japan, and earlier in Nelson, too, but I dispersed the contents one year while cleaning out my closet where it sat, and never reassembled. Which is crazy-silly considering our house sits on a different plate than the center of Nelson.

So I'll be doing that this morning. Though I don't know the specifics about last night's event, (and there is amazingly little media coverage in NZ; in Japan every channel would be analyzing/predicting with graphs/illustrations/3D models,) if this a precursor to something bigger, we'll be OK for a day or so, and if it turns out last night's jolt was a one off, at least we know we'll have a pack in my closet. And when we update the content, we can such on the old hard candy and laugh about it.

My immediate questions is: backpack or a small wheely suitcase? 

3 comments:

  1. I think this is where I confess that we don't have an emergency kit as such. We have stored water, camping food etc, and know the multitude of places torches are stashed. This method served us pretty well through February and June.

    If you do have a single pack, make sure it's carefully located - I would hate to have all my emergency stuff stored in the one place I couldn't get to easily after a quake.

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  2. In Japan, we had the pack in the office right next to the door. Here, it'll have to sit in the the stash room floor or my closet which are equally accessible. We have bigger stuff like big cases of water downstairs. One of my issues is up here we have three exits on the northern end of the house, but none at at the southern end; that's always spooked me. Downstairs we have one on each end. And there is a story about our staircase. :->}

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