evacuation go-bag

[hatidua]

Red Cross shelters

In the various incidents I've evacuated for, there have always been "shelters" set up for those leaving the disaster zone but I'm willing to drive far enough to find a motel with a vacant room, even if that is 400 miles away. Shelters would be my LAST resort, and if they don't take pets, I'll live with my pets in my SUV, I'm not leaving my dogs simply because the evac shelter has a no pets policy.

Prior to the three hurricanes I evacuated for in Florida, I think I gave too much weight to the standard list that so many people have for their BOB (a list perpetuated by online forums for those hoping for an end-of-world scenario). In reality, the things the that mattered most were decidedly not 500' of paracord/AR-15/five cases of 5.56, but instead were the computer hard drives and tedious to replace documents (passport, etc).

While many forums assume TEOTWAWKI scenarios, these natural disasters generally don't entail Mad Max situations....unless you happen to live in Haiti.

A spare jug of water, full tank of gas in the car, and one spare t-shirt is pretty handy. Machete and camping gear, not so much.

[kidicarus13]

Hey, you're kind of taking the fun away from the internet warriors that enjoy fantasizing about shooting looters at 300 yards to save their family and cache of food/ammo with your real life evacuation experience.