Earthquake Preparedness Ideas

We used to live very near a major fault line (<1 mile). Once I figured out what that meant we made some minor changes to our habits.

We lived in an apartment so we had to do things differently then in a home. We kept an evacuation kit in our car, and kept the car half full of gas almost all the time.

The most unconventional change was where we would park our car. I would pick parking spots away from trees and buildings so if an earthquake did happen anything that did fall down would be less likely to hit our car. Our car being our primary backup to our apartment.

Sure, we would have to walk a little further but that was not a big deal at all. There were no  earthquakes that we could feel while we were there but the potential was there. It helped us feel a lot safer be thing it through.

If you are in a home, you would have put a kit in a shed in the far reaches of the backyard so even if everything fell down it would be still pretty easy to get to. You could also add some rescue equipment like a couple of crowbars, some cribbing and a chainsaw and fuel.

The Loma Prieta quake — 20 years (and a few days) later | And Still I Persist

The Loma Prieta quake — 20 years (and a few days) later | And Still I Persist: "The quake finally died down, and I went out through the office’s sliding glass door to the outside deck and saw a glorious, once-in-several-lifetimes sight: dozens of giant redwood trees all swaying in unison in big sweeping arcs, while millions of tiny golden redwood leaves drifted down. None of the trees had fallen over, so I ran back into the house to check on everyone and to see what damage had been done to the house."

I remember this earthquake, though I was in college in Utah at the time. This is a good story to read since you get to learn from what happened to someone else, what worked and what didn't.

While earthquake is a potential threat here in Denver it is not as much a threat as in California or the Ohio River valley. A few of the standard precautions: strapping the hot water heater and tall bookcases down, 72 hour kit and the like.

Wisdom is learning from someone else's experience.