Chapter 2 · Your emergency kit
2.17 Common mistakes
- Eyeballing the water. Do the math: 14 gallons per person is a lot of jugs. If you have 20 gallons in a household of four people, you have enough for 5 days, not 2 weeks.
- Buying food that has to be cooked and having no safe way to cook it.
- Storing everything on the floor (if you live on the ground floor) or in the patio closet.
- A single flashlight for the whole family.
- Bags so heavy nobody can carry them. Test them by walking.
- Forgetting medications, glasses, chargers, and pet food. They're the first things you'll need.
- Building the kit and never looking at it again. Without rotation, half of it is useless in a year.
- Having only one person know where everything is. Show it to all the adults in the household.
