THE REASONS TO BE PREPARED

So....hurricane season in officially here. Last year, after a quiet (for us) Summer, we suddenly had hurricane Harvey bearing down on our area.  While it wasn't going to be a direct hit, there was the potential for heavy flooding for days.  They kept telling people it was best to be prepared.  As it turned out, it became one of the worst disasters ever to hit our city.   

About three days prior to Harvey hitting, I went to a large grocery store near the office at lunch just to check things out.  We already had plenty of supplies at the apartment so I thought it would be interesting to see how things were at the store since we had been hearing horror stories. 

This is a large, major grocery store near my office, Kroger for those familiar with the chain. Shelves are always stocked to the max.  Just a regular large grocery store in any city.  

This is why you should ALWAYS be prepared:

No water.

They even put up a sign so people would stop asking.  

This is the other water aisle in the store.

Cases, gallon bottles, small sizes, large sizes, all gone.  The two 24 packs in this picture were snatched up about 5 seconds after I took this picture.  

No bread at all.  No sandwich bread, no tortillas, no hamburger buns, no bagels, no muffins, nothing...

Chips, a few left but mostly gone...

Of course, what goes great with bread when you have no electricity?  

Peanut butter and jelly of course!

Gone.  All of it.

Juice boxes and flavored waters, much of it gone...

Soup, goes without saying, ALL of it was gone...

Canned meat, obviously that would fly off the shelves.  Tuna, chicken, canned beef, Vienna sausages, deviled ham, even the Spam (not hating on Spam, we love it), it was all gone...

Chili, just like the soup, also virtually cleaned out...

Of course it would make sense that canned beans and almost all other vegetables would be gone...

It wasn't limited to savory items either.  The breakfast cereal aisle (cereal, oatmeal, etc) was almost completely cleared out too...

And of course all the power bars, breakfast bars, energy bars, etc were picked over...

Seeing this in a store I go to regularly for routine groceries in aisles usually stocked front to back and top to bottom, reminded me of the post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows we've seen.  Walking Dead anyone?  Ha.  People go to the stores too late, only to find them empty of items and they end up running around like crazy to get whatever few items are left to be found and fighting over essentials.  

It was kind of shocking to see it happening in real life.  It reminds us the importance of being prepared.  What if it was something other than a storm?  If something happened that caused stores to not receive shipments of food and water?  What if you got to the store to get something you needed and found it like the pictures above?

We were prepared, thankfully. One thing we've done since Hurricane Ike several years ago was be prepared during Hurricane season. We keep a couple of cases of water in an extra closet in the guest room and we also have some backup soups and canned meat and vegetables in there as well.  Year round we always seem to have copious amounts of beans and rice in the pantry and we always have large amounts of flours, sugars and the like.  2nd Man can always make bread ahead of the storm or can make it after, if we have power of course.  

The government website READY.GOV reminds us that everyone should be able to survive on their own for a few days until emergency workers arrive as water/electricity could be off for weeks. 

In a really worst case scenario in Houston, we can use the farm as our safe place to go.

Any good suggestions?