Practicing for Emergencies

Practice makes perfect.  You usually hear this from your music teacher or your athletic coach.  But it applies to camping and survival skills too.  In a survival situation you don't want to try to remember what you learned in class or on the Internet or from a book.  You just want to know what do do and how to do it.  To be sure you know, you have to practice.  Skills like building a shelter, starting a fire without matches, and flint knapping all require some practice if you're going to be proficient in an emergency situation.

Each camping trip is a chance to practice at least some of your survival and emergency preparedness skills.   Just setting up camp as often as you can will help you develop procedures and techniques that will expedite moving into your tent or RV if you have to in a disaster situation.

Every campfire is an opportunity to practice survival skills of building a fire without matches.  Hone your techniques for building a proper fire beginning with tinder, then kindling, the larger pieces of wood.  Practice creating cooking fires and cooking a variety foods over the campfire -- and hotdogs and marshmallows don't really count.  Learn how to bake bread on a campfire (ash cakes or bread twists).  Bake your potatoes in foil in the coals.  Practice heating water over your campfire and cooking on a grill or in a fry pan.  Learn how to do Dutch oven cooking.

Take advantage of every camping trip to inspect your equipment. It is far better to find and fix minor problems during a weekend outing than discover them when your comfort, or maybe even your life, may depend on your camping gear.  Lanterns, stoves, and sleeping bags will likely see major use during a disaster, even if you don't have to move out of your house.  Have a plan to test seldom used equipment.  Not only will it help you keep everything in working order, it can be fun!  An old adage says, "It it hasn't been tested, it doesn't work."

Your knives and axes can almost always benefit from being sharpened before use.   Each outing is a chance to practice your sharpening skills and will make using your knife or axe easier.  You might want to sharpen your axe on your electric grinder before leaving home but you can almost always hone your knife on a sharpening stone just about anywhere, perhaps while enjoying a nice campfire.

Tents may be useful even if  your residence isn't damaged to the point you have to move out.  In winter weather you might set up a dome tent inside your house so you have a smaller area to keep warm on cold nights.  Having the tent out of the wind and precipitation it will be warmer than it would be outside and keeping a tent warm with body heat or auxiliary indoor propane heaters like Buddy Heaters will be a lot easier and more efficient than trying to heat hundreds of cubic feet of living space.

Camp cooking is a good way to develop and hone skills you could use at home during an emergency.  If the power goes out your electric range will be useless.  Gas supplies may be interrupted during a local disaster.  You may have to resort to cooking on your portable BBQ, using your camp stove, or even building a cooking fire in your back yard.  One wintery night we had a power outage that lasted a couple of hours right around dinner time.  We just moved our cooking out to the BBQ grill in the back yard and though we were standing in the snow, it got the job done without having to miss dinner.

Sanitation is a major problem in most disaster situations.  If you're lucky enough to have an RV or even a porta-potty, you have a big advantage over people who may have nothing when utilities fail.  If you have experience with primitive tent camping and know how to build your own safe latrine, you won't be dependent on any kind of modern technology.  One of the biggest health problems in refugee camps is cholera, caused by poor sanitation.  During a disaster situation, a lot of people may not give a crap about sanitation, but they sure produce a lot of it and it can be deadly!  You may be able continue to use your residential toilet even if your water supply is disrupted -- if the sewer system is still in tact.  Just manually fill the toilet tank with buckets of water.  Even dirty water from a creek or pond will do.  Don't waste potable water for flushing your toilet!  You can make an emergency toilet from a 5-gallon bucket and a contractor trash bag.  For an even more pleasant and sanitary experience, buy some "wag bags".  These are heavy plastic bags will with a compound inside that forms gel around waste products, helping to avoid spills and control odors.

Hopefully you won't have many opportunities to practice emergency medical procedures so you may have to participate in regular drills -- or create your own -- so you can be ready in case of an emergency.  Joining your local C.E.R.T. program and attending refresher courses every  year to so is one good way to accomplish this.  Renewing your first aid and CPR certification as required should go without saying.  Check the expiration on your card and try to get re-certified BEFORE it runs out!

Stay in practice!