Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: emergency supplies

[Moz (list]

Lynn Nadeau / Maraiah said:
> We don't have much storage space, just part of someone's shed. So
> we're largely reliant on what people have in their homes

But everyone should have at least a couple of days food and water in
their home disaster kits, so your communal disaster kit really is only
for longer periods.

As a community, I prefer to focus on stuff that people often don't
have - forget about duplicating the home first aid kit, make sure you
have splints and anti-venom (or whatever your local risks are). It
would be useful to make sure that you have some way to make your
rainwater tanks drinkable, that you have a gas bottle powered stove
(ie, community BBQ) and so on. Make sure your communal kitchen always
has a week or so of staples in it - buy a new bag of flour before the
old one runs out and so on. You can live on tortillas and canned
tomatoes for a couple of weeks if you have to. I would also look at a
small battery bank if you have local generation, or a small generator
if not (enough to run bare essentials for 2-3 days). All this stuff
really falls under "useful community goods that become part of the
disaster kit when needed, and get maintained accordingly".

We haven't actually got a coho built yet, but this is stuff I do
anyway in a 6-person share house and will scale up once we build a
bigger community.

The Victorian bushfires and Christchurch earthquake have been useful
local reminders.

Moz