Safe Room Preparation Must Haves
Safe rooms, bunkers, and emergency shelters are excellent options when it comes to emergency preparedness and home security. These rooms provide a much needed “safe zone” for you, your family, and other loved ones. Building a safe room in your home or underground is just the first step in keeping everyone safe. Having the safe room or panic room, but no supplies inside is like have a can of beans with no beans!
What should I have in a safe room?
Emergency Planning
One of your first steps in building your safe room list is to identify who will be there in the unlikely event of you needing to use the safe room. More often than not this list consists of your immediate family members and pets. This gives you a very basic head count of how many people you will need to supply. Once you have the head count for your safe room, you can begin planning.
Food
Planning food for your safe room is as easy as finding some of your family’s favorite meals with the caveat that the food stuffs need to either be canned or freeze dried so they keep for long periods of time. Water needs to be purchased for your safe room. If you don’t like the idea of drinking “old” water, simply rotate the bottled water from the safe room into your regular routine each time you bring more home from the store.
Buying a bunch of random food and drinks for your safe room might seem like a fine tactic, but if the food you buy isn’t able to be made into meals and some of those drinks aren’t water, your stay in your safe room is going to be an unpleasant one. This isn’t a road trip, this is survival. It’s ok to have some treats, but you do need to have real meals on hand.
If finding meals that can be made from cans proves difficult, MRE’s or camping food are both great ways to get started and last a long time.
Supplies
Planning supplies is a little more difficult, only because there is a lot to think about. Supplies can be broken up into a two different categories: personal items and comfort items.
First, let’s think of personal items that need to be kept in your safe room. These types of items consist of:
- Toiletries
- Medications (both prescription and over the counter)
- Blankets
- Warm clothes
- Everyday clothes
- Lots of underwear
Keeping these items in your safe room and continually making sure they are usable and fresh means that you can save precious time should disaster strike. Your safe room will be well prepared and ready to keep you and yours out of harm’s way.
The second set of supplies to think about are items to make the safe room a more comfortable.
These include:
- A light source that isn’t dependent on electricity
- Hand cranked radio
- Portable toilet and toilet paper
- Entertainment
- Books
- Board games
- Deck of cards
- Notepads with pencils, or crayons
- Pet toys and supplies
Make a list now of things that are going to make your stay in your safe room a more comfortable one.
While this list of supplies is by no means a comprehensive list, it’s important to think about what you are using your safe room for and the types of disasters it’s going to be able to prevent. If you have a heavy duty bunker, it may be in your best interest to supply your store room with iodine tablets to prevent against radiation. If you want to have the option of defending yourself, a weapon safe may also be on your supply list. These potentially one-off items are going to have to be decided before the day comes.
If you still don’t know where to start check out our Basic Survival Checklist
Need Help?
Looking for more help? US Safe Rooms is here to help. We help America build safe rooms to their needs. So take the next step, call us to get started.
