Pack a Go Bag

Having a "Go Bag" packed and ready helps prepare you for a quick escape. Hopefully, you will not need a Go Bag but regardless, it offers an added sense of security. It is also an aid in grounding you when traveling - your core belongings will always be close to you in one place.

In addition to making a quick exit easier, a Go Bag is useful for any emergency. When fear and panic are high, and the adrenaline is rushing, being prepared in this way can make a massive difference in safety.

What to Pack

Remember the 6 P's : Prescriptions, Paper and Plastic (Money/Documents) Personal Devices, Personal Supplies, Pets, Photos

1. Prescriptions
2. Papers & Plastic
3. Personal Devices and their chargers
4. Personal items
5. Pets
6. Photos

Prescriptions

While evacuating, you CAN NOT afford a medical crisis on top of everything else occurring, especially if it is preventable. Things, like insulin, and others can be needed soon and their absence could have IMMEDIATE consequences. Others, such as ADHD medication, anti-depressants, or other mental health medication is a lot more valuable than you would typically expect. In an emergency situation, the PRIMARY thing that will determine your chances of success in an emergency is a persons mental well-being, especially your own. That effects your ability to utilize all other things on this list to recover from disaster.

Some medications may be restricted or cannot be transported across borders. Check all of your medications and make a plan.

Papers & Plastic

Key items: passport, driver's license, birth certificate, maps, addresses, medical history. Paper includes cash on hand.

To recover from disaster, your job is made unfathomably more difficult without your documentation, cash, banking and/or credit card that help you access social resources and financial resources.

With personal devices, it is easier than ever to recover personal identification and purchasing power, but when it's ALL you have, your chances of accessing vital services is, at best, blocked SIGNIFICANTLY.

In all emergencies, critically timed resources are aided by physical copies of your identification and citizenship. In significant emergencies, this may broaden to social insurance information, deeds, insurance papers, proof of housing or property. Registering for refugee or evacuee resources are near impossible to if you are forced to recover your identification with what little else you have.

Insurance companies fight tooth and nail NOT to pay victims even in extreme cases, all documentation you can use to circumvent their restrictions on paying you fairly puts valuable monetary resources in your pocket.

When all other services or subsidies fail, you only have your own financial resources to fall back on.

In a critically vulnerable state, you can not afford to be denied what little social and financial resources may be available.

Personal Devices and their chargers

In the modern world, your ability to reach emergency services, access community and resources, and navigate routes and directions are taken for granted due to the popularity of smartphones and personal computers. In an emergency, those items are a LIFELINE! You don't have time to grab a contact list, use a map, or recover documents you'll need in the future. With all of that accessed through a single item in your pocket, and in your bookbag, you are at an immediate loss if they are not in your possession.

Likewise if they are run out of power and inoperable in a key moment. Remember your chargers to ALL devices.

Personal items

This isn't a category for mementos, keepsakes, or memorabilia.

In personal items you're reaching for toilet paper, bottles of water, snacks, food, and hygiene products. Your hygiene affects your well-being. Food and water affects your ability to function. Neither should be taken for granted. The road ahead can be unpredictable, both in impact and duration.

Plan your resources accordingly. take account of all the mouths and bums travelling with you.

With the previous categories, these items can be recovered easily. But each item you need to acquire once you're on the move diminishes your already endangered resources.

Pets

Include your pets' medical records and prescriptions.

Photos

The number one thing people who have gone through a natural disaster or other evacuation of any sort report regretting consistently, are the photo albums. Our photos document our history, and with it who we were once and who we are now. Without them, many feel like they've lost an anchor to the life the once had. And that should not be taken lightly.

In some cases, photo's might help us or give proof of property, or aid the recovery of lost pets, or find people who we've become separated from due to the disaster.

Packing for Driving to Canada or Mexico

Include blankets, flashlights (even better, LED head lamps), water, and a rechargeable radio.