Shelter

Shelters help you rest safely, stay warm/dry and helps morale. When considering preparations re. shelter(s) for a crisis it is helpful to think of tiers or layers. The top tier would be your normal day-to-day shelter…your apartment/condo/house. It has all your stuff setup, you know your way around, it has heating/running water/toilet/shower/laundry/fridge/etc…,you’re comfortable and feel safe. Awesome base to work from. But what if you can’t get there, have to leave or it is compromised in such a way that it’s non-viable?

So the next thing to do is to consider how to prepare/mitigate things that may compromise the viability of your shelter. That could be a security system, good locks on your doors/windows, perimeter lighting, fire extinguishers, a water filtration system, generator/gas, a bbq/propane, etc… Certainly some situations will be beyond what you can practically mitigate. If you shelter is in proximity to a propane processing facility and there’s an explosion, you may be forced to evacuate. If you’re in a flood prone area, you may be forced to go if the spring floods overwhelm the levees and rivers. Etc…

After you’ve assessed the viability of your shelter, you could consider your primary alternate shelter. This could be a number of layers unto itself. If you’ve made good neighbours you could temporarily shelter with them if you have a house fire. If the crisis is just affecting your house/block and you can’t shelter in place to ride it out, you could move in with someone else, rent an air BnB/hotel, go to a cottage, etc… Think of where you would go…then prepare for what you’d need to get there and what you’d need to stay there. A lot of people will rely of their levels of government to take care of them. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if that’s your approach you have to accept that it will be done at the pace and in whatever way that they decide. It may not be what you deem necessary, there may not be the comforts you want, etc…

When considering your shelter, consider the essentials of what your shelter needs to keep you safe, warm and in good spirits. Start with the fundamentals of life. Warmth, food/water and sanitation. Consider how much food you need to keep on hand for the crisis that you’re planning for, how you are going to store it safely, how are you going to rotate through things so as not to waste. Consider how you are going to keep clean so you don’t get sick. Consider how you’re going to keep warm and dry.

Identify your primary means of doing each of those things…then figure out one backup method and what it’ll take to have that ready to go. The easy part is identifying your primary means…you already have those in place, but the important part is to think it through because it will help you more precisely identify your backups/alternatives for if/when the primary means aren’t available.

A note to those who have a mindset of…”when I need it, I’ll just take it”. In my opinion, first off…it’s not the moral thing to do. Secondly, in this day and age…forcibly taking something is an inherently dangerous thing to do. If the situation is desperate enough for you to act on your plan to take someone else’s shelter and resources, it is entirely likely that the person(s) that you’re trying to take those things from are going to defend their position to their last breath.