First, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to our veterans who have served and to remember those who lost their lives or came back less than whole. I respect
and appreciate you more than words can say.
You will never be forgotten.
...
Recently, my daughter reminded me of something scary that happened when she was a child, which in turn reminded me of how I made sure the same kind of thing could never happen again.
At the time, we lived in Ontario, Canada.
When my youngest girl was 9, she walked home from school with another kid. It wasn't far - just a few blocks down the same street that we lived on. At this point in time, her older sister was staying at their dad's house to attend a specific high school that had a program she wanted to participate in.
I was a single mom, so being there to pick her up wasn't an option: I had to work.
R, my daughter, had always been very responsible, and she was smart. And most of all, she followed the rules. She didn't talk to strangers, wouldn't take a ride from anyone, and locked the door behind her. As soon as she got home, she called to let me know she'd made it safely. Then she began her homework, and I got home an hour and a half later.
Everything went along smoothly for months. Then one day, shortly after R called to let me know she was home, there was a terrible storm that seemed to come out of nowhere.
High winds shook the city, and a torrential downpour erupted. Within minutes, our power was out, which meant our phone lines were out at work. This was before everyone had a cell phone, so I had no way to reach my daughter. I also had no way of knowing what was going on at our place - for all I knew, things were just fine, and the power was still on. My boss told me to wrap up with
the customers I had, then I could leave.
But things were NOT fine at our home. We lived, at the time, in a second-floor apartment in a duplex. My daughter had been getting a snack when a sudden gust of wind and a flying branch caused the kitchen window to implode. She was terrified and tried to call me, but of course, could not get through.
She made the decision to leave the apartment. She first went to see if the downstairs neighbor was home. She was not. Then my daughter went over to see Mr. and Mrs. Cozy, her nickname for the kindly old couple who lived next door. Unfortunately, the Cozys were out too.
And that's when things got bad.
R decided to walk to my office, which was about a mile away.
In gale-force winds.
In the pouring rain.
With thunder and lightning.
To
say I was stunned when one of my coworkers said, "Hey, your daughter's here" is an understatement. I looked up to see my little girl, drenched to the skin, red-faced from crying, bullet toward me sobbing. Behind her was a woman who looked extremely uncomfortable.
She introduced herself as the school bus driver. She hoped I wasn't angry she'd given my daughter a ride, but she had seen R when she stopped into the convenience store at the corner near our place to let the Asian lady who owned the store know where she was going. (She was trying to follow the rule of always letting someone know where you're going to be.) The store owner tried to convince her not to go and offered to let her stay at the store until it was time for me to come home. The bus driver, who my daughter knew well, saw that R had no intention of staying, so she offered her a ride to my office. The shop owner took down my phone number and promised to keep trying to call me,
and my daughter accepted the ride. I was so grateful to these kind women for looking out for my daughter that I hugged the bus driver and thanked her profusely.
My boss let me leave immediately with my drenched, sobbing kid. We went home to deal with the damage.
She wasn't in trouble, but I enforced to her how incredibly dangerous her decision had been. I understood why she'd done it, but I knew that I had to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.
That's when I started a notebook of emergency protocols. I wracked my brain, trying to think of all the things that could potentially go wrong in the 90 minutes that she was home alone each day. Then, I wrote specific instructions in bullet point format of exactly what to
do.
When R recently reminded me of this during a movie night in which we watched something similar happen, I thought of how important it is to have concise and accurate information in an emergency.
That's when I decided to write up the first batch of In Case of Emergency printables. It's incredibly important to know what to do FAST when bad things happen. You may not have the time (or electricity) to look it up on the internet and discern whether or not you have good information. You might not be able to find
what you need buried in a book. But if you have an emergency binder, or you post these printables in your home in the area where people would be most likely to take shelter, they'll have a simple protocol and be warned of dangers they may not have considered.
When bad things happen, knowing how to manage the event safely is essential.
This weekend's OP fundraiser is the premiere batch of my In Case of Emergency printables. It contains instructions for what to do in the event of Tornados, Earthquakes, Wildfires, and Nuclear Events, as well as a
Post-Disaster Safety Checklist. I'm really proud of this product because it's incredibly useful for anyone.
These will be selling for $5 a pop later on, but this weekend, you can pay whatever you would like in a "name your price" sale for the whole pack of five printables.
If you aren't home,
you want your loved ones to be prepared to manage emergencies. In Case of Emergency printables can help.
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