A Grab & Go Bag is a bag that is kept packed and ready to go. My feeling is that each family member should have one. These are the bags that you would grab and take with you if you had to leave your home quickly. I read last night that 20,000 homes had been ordered evacuated because of wild fires near San Diego. Have you ever had to pack quickly on a moment’s notice? That never works out for me. The purpose of the grab & go bags is to have what you need right at hand, be able to grab it and go on a moment’s notice.
Each family should evaluate their possible situations. What could happen that could might you to have to rush out of your home? How long might you be gone? Where would you go? For us, the biggest threat is probably a wildfire, which would mean leaving quickly if given an evacuation notice. For a hurricane, you would have a little more prep time.
A grab & go back should contain everything you would need for at least several days. If you take any kinds of meds, they should definitely be included.
Rather than listing the individual items that you should have, I would suggest you do a bit of research (google grab & go bags) and you’ll come up with all kinds of ideas. Here’s a list that I find helpful.
Additionally, I keep a bag for the pets. It contains leashes, bowls, food (which I switch out for fresh on the first of each month), treats, the flea/heartworm meds they each get.
In each of our vehicles, we keep a box with a pair of shoes, socks, and various outdoor type things, like whistles, mosquito spray, respirators, etc. Instead of keeping that in a cardboard box, we switched it to a plastic box that could double as a litter box for Boots if we had to take him somewhere.
Our vehicles all have first aid kits and flashlights in them.
If you have small children, you might want to keep a small bag packed with age appropriate things to keep them entertained – a deck of cards, a drawing pad, a crossword puzzle, etc.
We always keep snacks in our cars. In mine, I keep nuts and granola bars. I won’t leave plastic water bottles in the car but I keep several bottles of water in the sewing room fridge and we pack those in a cooler any time we’re leaving the house for more than a few hours. During hurricane evacuations, you’ve probably seen the line of traffic that takes hours to go one mile. It’s bad enough to be stuck in that line but to be stuck in that line hungry and thirsty makes it worse.
Some folks pack their grab & go bags with the idea of heading out into the woods to live. I do not. Since our main threat that would cause us to leave quickly is a wild fire, my plan is to get to a motel or to a friend’s home. If heading out into the woods is part of your plan, you should also include the type things you would need for that – tent, blankets, fire starters, etc.
Another thing to think about that I’m not going to cover but you can surely discuss is important documents such as birth certificates, wills, etc. I will say this: If there’s someone you trust completely, it’s a great idea for someone else to have copies of these documents.
The main idea here is: Have a grab & go bag and make sure you have everything in it that you need in order to be comfortable if you have to leave and cannot get back to your home for several days.
Judy D in WA says
I was just talking about bags this morning. I really need to do this. The only thing I have in the car is a quilt and my rule forever is to have a working flashlight.
Helen Koenig1 says
I have a car emergency kit – which is just what it says – has emergency lights and whatevers – as well as a First Aid kit in the car (I seem to need this more then than at home!). I also have/did have an emergency personal kit at home – my grab and go kit – in a cut-out plastic milk carton of all things! this is something that FEMA and government emergency people recommend – but I first heard of on the Food Storage Made Easy Site. I’m now updating all my kits and will be re-stocking them after this week. Also on the FSME site are free plans for a binder which can hold all the paper essentials – ie, birth certificates and you name it. Should an emergency around here arise – I can grab that as well and go – to leave it with someone I trust wouldn’t do any good because they would most probably be in the same need to leave situation as I would be! And those are things I would NEED so sending them to my dd or to my dil’s mom would do no good for me when I would need them! Neither would storing them in a bank vault which operates on electricity!
Barbara says
Years ago when I first moved to the country, we had the threat of a wildfire…it got close before anyone told us what was happening.
Husband said he would open all the gates and let all the animals run for it and hope that they would find their way back home when it was over.
I was in such shock at the suddenness of it, all I knew to do was grab my car keys and purse and be ready to go.
The fire got close (about a block away) and they contained it…but I remember thinking how ill prepared we were. We would have left with nothing.
In the midst of a crisis is not the time to have to stop and think about what to do or what to pack.
Glen in Louisiana says
Katrina, anyone?
Glen in Louisiana says
Katrina, anyone?
Barb in Florida says
Good idea…. better get ours ready. I hadn’t remembered about the pet stuff either, Thanks for the reminders.
Donna Williams says
We are often ridiculed for having go bags. But I’m ready, anytime. The natural disaster that might send us off to the wild blue yonder would include a nasty tornado or out of control fire, and we also often need to make business trips at the drop of a hat. We also have a son who is a quadriplegic about 3 hours away (his dad and most of the family live closer to him) and there have been times when there was an emergency surgery or whatnot. I don’t have time to think clearly about what we might need in that situation, so it is helpful to have everything good to go. The same folks who ridicule me have had emergencies and needed to go quickly for various reasons and they almost always don’t have everything they need thereby forcing them to wither do without or spending unnecessarily. It is my unsolicited opinion everyone should have a go bag regardless of what you think may happen. Something’s gonna happen sooner or later – we like being prepared.
Katie Z. says
We’re still searching for a good method of go bags. The kids are so little that their needs change rapidly, and I have a hard time keeping bags for them appropriately packed. Right now, we have a car kit, a diaper bag always stocked and in the car, and I throw food and water in my bag every time we leave, We need to work on this!
liz says
I have bags for doing everyday things such as the morning gym bag, but my go bag needs a lot of work. Cleaning out the hallway closet is on my to-do list and that would be a great place to stash one.
Concerning flashlights – consider getting one that doesn’t need batteries. I have a small lantern that uses a crank arm as well as having a small solar patch on top. My radio-flashlight combo works off of AA batteries as well as a crank arm.
And, I am working on my emergency book but I like the idea of scanning everything onto a flash drive which is much easier to stash.
Teresa F. says
Good idea on the battery-less flashlights, Liz! We had a town-wide power outage that lasted for 6+ hours during one of the coldest nights of the polar vortex. We discovered that the batteries in all but 2 of our flashlights had corroded rendering the flashlights useless. From now on I am keeping the batteries WITH the flashlights but not IN them.
danielle says
We have the wind ip radio and fkashlights in addition to battery powered ones….dont bother with those shake them up lights….they are eorthless!
Cathy Smith says
You would think that I would have this ready to go! Last year when San Antonio got hit with a 12″ of rain in a 24 hour period, I woke up on Saturday morning to get my daughter ready for some event she had going on and put my feet on the floor to find my house was flooding! I had to grab the kids and go quickly. We were out of the house for two weeks and even then ended up moving. Getting everything together while wading through water and mud in the aftermath to live out of a hotel for two weeks was a nightmare. Yet it still hasn’t occurred to me to get a “go bag” together. Thanks for all you do!!!
danielle says
Both hubby and I became CERT certified in the past few years. And living in CA I too understand the importance of all this. But there are things I cannot understand how to do – or how other people do:
1. Keep spare glasses. Well, with the cost of my glasses, I cant afford a 2d pair. I do have an old pair that I keep for emergencies – so they will do – but they are not the appropriate prescription….
2. When insurance companies will only pay for one month/pills at a time – how do you keep extra medication? We are lucky because we can do 3 month/mail order so we could rotate out hubby’s pills….but how do other people do it?
3. Our biggest problem is room in our vehicles to keep what we need – we do have a full size pickup but it has no camper or anything so things would have to go in the back seat and you soon run out of room; my car is a hatchback and doesn’t have much room and what it has is in full view of passer bys. So how do people over come these issues?
BTW I really am asking for people’s advice on these topics!
JudyL says
Last year, I bought a pair of single vision glasses at WM when they had a special and I could get them for $40. My extra reading glasses are the ones I bought for $12 at Walmart and I use those in bed when reading because I sometimes fall asleep with them on and I’ve messed up more than one pair of my good reading glasses.
As far as prescriptions, I don’t have any good advice. Maybe someone else can provide info.
My only suggestion about the vehicles is to re-evaluate what all you need to take. If you got a big Rubbermaid type container with a tight fitting lid and put shoes, and some heavy items in there, keep it inside the house or garage til needed, then tie it in the back of the pickup and once you get where you’re going, bring it in and don’t leave it outside.w3e
danielle says
I guess that is a good idea for the glasses……didnt think of that….be better than mothing (I watch disaster films and think about how useless I eould be with no glasses). We do have sn earthquake kit in the garage plus cases of water that we vould throw quivkly into the truck….just worry about what would happen uf we are not home)
Rebecca in SoCal says
I’ve been stewing on the question of prescriptions. Not only does insurance pay for only 30 days at a time (why? it”s cheaper to buy more…) but I once tried to refill “too early” and had to explain that I was going to travel. They are far too expensive to buy on my own!
p.s. I am watching one of those fires, Judy, and made up a bag today. DH isn’t cooperating, so I have to think for him, too.
JudyL says
I am going to do a blog post on uncooperative spouses. Not that I have one . . mine is fully cooperating now but he hasn’t always been.
JudyL says
Good luck to you Rebecca. Those fires have to be so scary.
Deb K says
Judy, Grab and go bags make such good sense. I also did this for our horses. We didn’t have complete fencing and so I couldn’t just open the barn doors and yell run. I was so afraid of a fire situation where I would need to get multiple horses out of the barn quickly. I kept a grab and go box in the horse trailer. I had the horse trailer always facing at the best place to quickly back up the truck and ready to hook up because I didn’t want to try to back it up in an emergent situation. I kept halters and lead ropes for all horses that were labelled with their names so that we could get them on quickly and lead them out. I didn’t want to just rely on the halter hanging outside of their stall since sometimes the horses were in the pasture without a halter on. It gave me peace of mind to know we were prepared.