Get Ready for the Unexpected with a Disaster Go Bag

Flashlights, jugs of bottled water, a first aid kit, and ready-to-eat meal packs line the living room floor of the Rodriguez family. The family isn’t going camping—they’re preparing for disaster by putting together a “go bag.”

Juan and Bermith Rodriguez never used to worry about natural disasters in their western North Carolina home of Kings Mountain. But after the hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms and forest fires of 2020, they don’t want to leave anything to chance for their two children, Joan and Anthony, ages 16 and 11 respectively.

Preparing in advance with a disaster-ready kit has helped families nationwide through extreme and abnormal weather events, which experts warn are on the rise.

“Having a personal preparedness plan increases your chances of staying safe,” according to a training program from the Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

Juan Rodriguez said his family’s decision to prepare “go bags” was largely due to the urging of congregation elders. The Rodriguez family are Jehovah’s Witnesses who attend a Spanish congregation in Shelby, N.C. He said preparation for natural disasters is a global effort of Jehovah’s Witnesses, adding that congregation members receive disaster-preparedness help both through periodic reminders at their congregation meetings and from tips for putting together go bags on the organization’s website, www.jw.org.

"Life is precious, so we encourage all to heed the Bible’s advice to take practical steps to protect ourselves from danger,” said Robert Hendriks III, spokesman for Jehovah’s Witnesses in the United States.

“We update our go bags every year,” said Rodriguez, adding that he and his wife, who are natives of Puerto Rico, are no strangers to natural disasters.

“I was just a kid in 1989 when Hugo hit Puerto Rico," Rodriguez said. “When we moved to North Carolina, I learned that Hugo came right through Cleveland County five days later.”

According to Rodriguez, the worst he remembers was Hurricane Georges, a Category four storm that hit Puerto Rico in 1998. “I was 22, and living at home with my parents,” he said. “We all survived but that storm wiped out everything we owned.”

Putting the emergency kits together was a family project, Rodriguez said. “We love camping, so we have two large backpacks in a woodshed behind the house. We have all our emergency supplies in a large plastic box. If disaster strikes, I figure we can have everything transferred to the two packs and be on the road in about five minutes.”

Rodriguez figures the go bags will also prove useful in the opposite circumstances as “stay bags” in case of a prolonged power outage. He still remembers Hurricane Jeanne, a 2004 Category three storm that knocked power out in Puerto Rico for two months.

“My wife was pregnant with our first child,” remembers Rodriguez. “We survived on canned food and dined by candlelight each night out of necessity. It was quite a celebration when the power finally came back on.”

Disaster-preparedness suggestions and tips for putting together a go bag are available from FEMA at ready.gov and from Jehovah’s Witnesses at https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/awake-no5-2017-october/disaster-....