11 Items FEMA Wants You To Keep In Your Home

Welcome back, survivalists. So FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has a very specific list of items it wants all Americans to have in their homes at all times to be prepared for any number of man-made or natural disasters. And this is a general emergency kit to prepare you and your family for anything from tornadoes to hurricanes to pandemics. So today we're going to run through each of these individual items that you should have in your FEMA emergency supply kit. I'm going to give you my thoughts on those items, and then at the end of the I'm going to include a few additional items that I personally think you should also have in your emergency kit. So the first thing that they recommend is having one gallon of water per person per day for three days. So if you have a family of five, they want you to have at least 15 gallons of water stored away. And this water is going to be used not just for drinking, but also for sanitation and cooking. You know, maybe brushing your teeth, maybe cleaning yourself, washing your dishes, maybe cooking some pasta. And it's a pretty easy item to check off your list. I got these for about a dollar a piece from my grocery store. And I have a bunch of these literally just sitting in a closet somewhere, just in case I ever need them. And this is really only going to be relevant for emergencies where you lose access to clean drinking water. So for example, let's say you're on public water and you have a bad earthquake and one of those water pipes on your street burst. Now you don't have access to clean drinking water anymore. If you had a really bad hurricane or flood, your drinking water could also become contaminated. If you're on a well and you have a pump for your well and you just simply lose power, guess what? That pump's not going to be pumping clean water to your home anymore. So in all these situations, having a reserve of clean drinking water is pretty important. The next item is three days of non-perishable food for each of your family members. So again, if you have a family of five and you want three meals a day for each of them for three days, that's 45 meals that you need to have set aside. Now you could just go out to your store and stock up on some non-perishable items like oatmeal That's a pretty quick and easy way to stock up on a few extra meals. But another option is you could buy something like this, which is an MRE, a meal ready to eat. These are pre-packaged meals that the military often use. Now one thing you should know about MREs is that they are incredibly calorically dense. One MRE may have anywhere between a thousand to two thousand calories in just one package. So truthfully, if you're in a tight situation, you could probably turn one MRE really into two different meals. Now another option is you could just simply buy a bucket of freeze-dried food like this for emergencies. This bucket here has 60 servings of meals, so that's more than enough to cover a family of five for three days. And something like that also has a 25-year shelf life, so you literally just buy one, stick it in a closet somewhere, and just not think about it until you absolutely need it. And I'll have links in the description below this video to a lot of the items I'll be referencing in this video if you want to learn more about them. So the next item that they recommend is an emergency radio with a crank on it. So I've got a few of these. This one here is from Voyager, and what I like about it is it also has a solar charger here so you can leave it out in the daytime. It also has a USB port connections here if you wanted to maybe charge this up in your car, and it also has a flashlight on there that you can use just in case of emergencies. So the real purpose of this is in case the power goes out in your home or in your community for several days or even several weeks. This way you can still stay informed of the latest news and emergency updates. I remember when Hurricane Sandy struck New York City, and they had entire blocks without any power at all. The city came in and set up stations with food and supplies and clean drinking water. But the problem was many of the residents didn't know about this, and they didn't know how to access this because they didn't have emergency radios or any electricity, so they couldn't access the internet or the TV. If those residents had an emergency radio with them, they would have known that their city was providing them resources probably just a few blocks away from their home. Out of all the items today, this is probably one of the first ones that I recommend that you go out and get just because how common it is for people to lose power in America for several days or several weeks even. All it takes is a really bad storm or a blizzard or a hurricane, and you and your families could be without power for a long time. So the next item is going to be a first aid kit. Now this is one of the less fun or exciting items, but you absolutely need to have a decent first aid kit in your home. It doesn't need to be an incredibly extravagant one, just one with all the basic necessities. If you are in an emergency situation where you lose power or clean water, hygiene is going to be incredibly important, especially if you get a cut or a burn on yourself. The last thing that you want is to have a small cut that then gets infected and you don't have the ability to go to a hospital to seek actual medical treatment. So the next thing that they recommend is having a whistle for you to signal for help. Now you may be kind of quick to dismiss this item, but I actually can see a lot of situations where this could come in handy. If you're in a building that partially collapsed due to a tornado or an earthquake, hopefully you were able to shelter in place in the room with your emergency kit before that happens. When the emergency responders are searching the rubble looking for survivors, having that whistle could be the difference between life and death. I'm also reminded of Katrina where many survivors were trapped in their attics due to the flood water, some for several days. And as the emergency responders were looking for survivors, having that whistle could be the difference between them finding you and them not. Next FEMA recommends that you have dust masks in your homes. Now I could see this being relevant in a lot of situations. Right now California is seeing a large number of forest fires and people evacuating their homes at the last moment. Many of them are having to drive through very thick dark clouds of smoke to escape. Having a dust mask like this will provide some level of filtration for that dark smoke. Also if somebody in your household is sick, having a dust mask like this may help them from not contaminating the rest of the family. Now something like this is just a dust mask. You can get these at Home Depot, you can get them at the dollar store. They're pretty cheap and inexpensive and they really don't provide that much filtration, just kind of the basic filtration. Another option is you can invest in a box of medical surgical masks. Now these could provide a little bit of filtration but they have what's known as leakage, which is where air can come in from the sides of the mask and just bypass the mask altogether. These are really designed to keep the wear of the mask from spreading a contagion when they cough, sneeze, or even talk. Now really the best option is to get what's known as an N95 respirator. Now these do provide much more filtration than a simple dust mask. If the respirator has the N95 rating, it means that it can filter out 95% of all particles, 0.3 microns or larger. So this will filter out smoke but it'll also filter out things like viruses. And because of its design, it'll create a much tighter seal around your face and have less leakage of air bypassing the filter altogether. So the next item is plastic sheeting and duct tape. Now I'm not going to lie, this kind of surprised me that they had this on their emergency supply kit. Now duct tape is incredibly handy and everybody should have duct tape in their emergency kit but I really only think that the plastic sheeting is necessary if you're facing a radiological or a biological threat. For example, if a nuclear bomb detonated kind of close to you and you're outside of the blast zone so you survived the initial blast but you're inside the area that's affected by the nuclear fallout, having a plastic sheeting and duct tape will be great to shelter in place because you can cover up all your windows, all your air vents, all your doors so you have no nuclear fallout that seeps into your room. It's also true if there's some sort of biological threat that is airborne and could seep into your home. Having the plastic sheeting, you can literally seal up all the access points of air coming into your home. So the reason why this kind of surprised me that they included this because this is a pretty extreme threat and in the last 100 years there have not been that many situations where this would be relevant. But if you do want to cover your bases and be prepared for all emergency situations, having some plastic sheeting and duct tape will be incredibly valuable if you need a shelter in place due to a radiological or a biological threat. The next item that they recommend is moist towelettes, garbage bags, and plastic ties. Now this is going to be used specifically for waste disposal. So if you lose power and you lose water to your home but you don't want to have to leave your home just to go use the bathroom, you could easily rig something up with a garbage bag and a bucket or maybe even put the garbage bag inside your toilet and use it that way. If you have enough garbage bags this could be a one-time use for each of them. You use it, you seal it up, and you throw it out the back door. Waste disposal is one of those not as glamorous items to prepare for and something that people don't really think about. But if you don't have water coming to your home and your toilets don't flush, what do you do? So the next item that they recommend is wrench and pliers to turn off utility. And I think what they're really referencing here is if you need to turn the gas off to your home and you need to have some kind of wrench or pliers in order to do that. And this one may be specific to each individual person's home, but I do recommend having some basic tools in your emergency supply kit. They then also recommend having a can opener. This is really only if you have canned foods in your home. I absolutely could see somebody stocking up on a bunch of canned foods and forgetting the can opener. The next item that they recommend is a map and I 100% agree with that. If you lose power and you can't charge your phone or maybe the roads are closed and you need to get to the police department or the fire department or the hospital, or maybe just out of that area in general, having a map that you can actually hold and read is going to be invaluable. Now they also recommend having a set of flashlights with batteries and I absolutely agree with that. I think that that should be in everybody's emergency kit. It's also why I like this radio here because it has a flashlight built into it as well. Now when you're buying flashlights, you can get a directional flashlight like this or you can get an omnidirectional flashlight like this and personally, I really recommend that you invest in some omnidirectional flashlight. When you lose power, an omnidirectional flashlight makes it so much easier to illuminate an entire room and it frees up your hands for activities. Now there's some really interesting flashlight designs out there today. This one here is from HydroLite and it's an omnidirectional light, but you can also compact it and now it turns into a directional flashlight. What I really love about this flashlight, it has a rechargeable battery which you can charge with these solar panels on the back of the flashlight or through USB. This flashlight is also from HydroLite and actually has two different power sources. One are batteries that are here in the base that I can exchange and the other one is rechargeable batteries that are charged from this solar panel and I absolutely love the idea of flashlights with solar chargers built into them. So every day you just stick them outside, they charge and then night time you bring them into your home and actually use them. And again, I'll have links to these two flashlights in the description below if you want to check them out. So that's all the items that FEMA recommends and now I'm going to add a few more items that I personally recommend that you also include in your emergency supply kit. The first one is going to be cash and in small denominations if possible. I have absolutely seen situations where grocery stores and gas stations lose power and they can't process credit cards anymore and they are only relying on cash. That's actually a pretty common scenario and probably happens at least once a year somewhere in America. If you're relying solely on your credit card or cell phones to purchase items and the power goes out in your entire community because of an earthquake or a tornado or a hurricane, how are you going to buy those necessities that you need? And let's say it's a really bad situation, you need to buy supplies from a neighbor, they're probably not going to take an IOU. The next item I would recommend is after you have all your other items taken care of, I would invest in some sort of portable water filtration system and this is really in case the emergency lasts for longer than three days and your water supply starts running out. This one here is from Survival Filter and it's their manual pump and you can use this to filter water from a pond or stream or even a puddle. But just keep in mind that this is just filtering the water of all large debris and particles but you still need to then boil the water or treat it chemically in order for it to be drinkable. And this particular filter is from Survival Filter and I'm pretty happy with this product. The next item I would recommend is a box of rubber gloves. And you can actually use these in a lot of different situations. If you go back to the scenario of you losing water to your home and now your toilets don't work and you're relying on trash bags instead, you're really going to be wishing that you had some rubber gloves in that type of situation. These also come in handy for medical uses if there are any injuries that you need to treat. And of course if you're in a pandemic situation and you don't want to get any kind of contaminant on your hand in public places, having some gloves like this is also really helpful. So the next item I want to recommend, I was a little hesitant to include, but for the typical family, if you can avoid using fire at all, I kind of recommend that. For example, I'd rather see people relying on rechargeable flashlights rather than emergency candles. Especially if you have a lot of small kids in your home. But if you think that your family can be responsible for fire, then I really recommend you getting some sort of propane camping stove. Now if you already have a barbecue grill in your backyard with a propane tank, that can also suffice. But if you do lose power and you were relying solely on an electric stove or a microwave to cook water and to boil water, and having a camping stove like this may be your last resort to cook some food, heat up some water, and sanitize some water. But make sure you also have a box of waterproof matches that you keep along with your camping stove. If you guys want to see what items I recommend that you buy during a pandemic outbreak, click right here to check out that video. For more survival and preparedness videos, subscribe and hit that bell icon to get notified every time I upload a new video. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you guys over in the next video.