Most emergencies don’t happen at home. They happen while you’re in transit — on the way to work, picking up kids from school, heading back from the coast. Your car is where you’re most exposed, and for most people, it’s also the least prepared location in their life. A car emergency kit doesn’t need to
Picture this: A major earthquake hits the Cascadia Subduction Zone at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. You’re at work. Your partner is at home. Your kids are at two different schools across town. Cell towers are overwhelmed. Texts aren’t going through. Calls won’t connect. What happens next depends entirely on whether your family already has
Most emergencies don’t happen at home. They happen while you’re in transit — on the way to work, picking up kids from school, heading back from the coast. Your car is where you’re most exposed, and for most people, it’s also the least prepared location in their life. A car emergency kit doesn’t need to
Emergency shelters often don’t accept pets. Evacuation routes can take longer when you’re managing an anxious animal. And animals — especially cats — have a frustrating habit of hiding the moment the energy in a household shifts toward crisis. If you have pets, they need to be part of your emergency plan. Not as an
In September 2020, more than 500,000 Oregonians were under evacuation orders simultaneously. Entire communities had less than 30 minutes to leave. In some cases, the warning and the fire arrived at nearly the same time. Pacific Northwest wildfires have changed. The fires of the past decade are larger, faster, and less predictable than what this
The last time the Cascadia Subduction Zone produced a full-margin rupture, in January 1700, the resulting tsunami struck the Oregon and Washington coasts within minutes. The shaking stopped and the ocean followed — not as a single wave, but as a series of surges over several hours, each capable of reaching miles inland. That event
A power outage in July is uncomfortable. A power outage in January, in a Pacific Northwest home where the heat runs on an electric furnace, is a different situation — one that can become dangerous for vulnerable household members within hours if temperatures drop far enough. The Pacific Northwest isn’t the upper Midwest. Most homes
The question people often ask about emergencies is “what do I need to have?” The more important question is “what do I need to decide?” And no decision matters more, in the early minutes of an emergency, than whether to stay or go. Both choices can be right. Both choices can be catastrophically wrong. The
In well-built modern structures, major earthquakes rarely cause buildings to collapse outright. What they do — consistently, predictably — is cause things inside buildings to fall, break, and injure the people who live there. Bookcases. Water heaters. Kitchen cabinets. Heavy pictures. Televisions. Appliances. The things that hurt people in earthquakes are usually the things that
After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,000 people, researchers studied how survivors were rescued. The finding has been replicated in disaster after disaster since: the majority of people who were pulled from collapsed structures were rescued by neighbors, not emergency services. In a major regional disaster, professional first responders will be overwhelmed.
