Insulation, what to use for a emergency kit.

One of most impotent things to keep you alive are clothing and other form of insulation like a blanket of sleeping bag. Proper closing can in extreme conditions mean the difference between life and dead. In our modern world the primary role of clothing; protecting you from the environment, is of less important. There are heated cars and buildings everywhere. A lot of people cloth them self's fashionable, but not necessarily practical.

There are many article on the internet about outdoor clothing. This is a very good place to start when you are setting up clothing for your emergency preparedness. The basics are a three layer system:
- Under layer to wick away moisture from the skin
- Insulation to keep warm
- Wind proof and water proof/resistant layer to keep the weather out

There is however a important difference with the outdoors. For emergency kits, you need clothing that can be stored compacted for long periods of time and preferable durable enough to be used in less than optimal conditions.

There isn't much difference between outdoor under layers and emergency clothing. Insulation layer is a different story. With a move to ever lighter and smaller equipment, synthetic fiber or down filled jackets have been appearing as a insulating layer, replacing the traditional wool or fleece. In a preparedness point of view this lighter and smaller alternative to wool and fleece is not a solution. Emergency equipment is generally stored in kits or containers for years. This means equipment is compressed for longer periods of time. Synthetic or down require the fibers to loft to create insulation. Compressing them for long periods of time will reduce there lofting ability and making them less insulating (we are talking years on end here). Compressing fiber insulation for the first time, will cause the most reduction in loft. The compression after that are still harmful in the long term, but not as bad as the first time. If you are planning to replace them every few years, than you could use fiber based insulation. Not compressing them is also a option when space is not a issue. Wool and fleece do not compress well, but they do retain there insulating value in long term storage. They are also generally a lot more hard wearing than the insulating or down filled jackets (these generally have super thin and light outer shells).

I would also recommend fleece over wool. Fleece is much cheaper, lighter and dries out far quicker. Wool itches, stays wet for long periods of time and make you smell like a wet dog. Wool does however protects against spark, while fleece doesn't.

For the outer layer, the ultralight exteriors (Pac-lites, etc) are to vulnerable. Choose a stronger version, preferable with reinforcements on hard wearing locations. Thicker, more durable outer layers generally don't breath as well, so choose one with ventilation zips to get moisture out.

The problem with the insulating jackets not only apply to clothing, but also to sleeping bags and blankets. Synthetic and down sleeping bags are also not suitable for long term compressed storage. So use fleece or wool blankets, unless you want to replace the bag every few years. One other note, if sleeping bags are store in a reasonable accessible location (compressed or not), they will probably be abused and used a moving blankets. Things need to be moved in warehouses and moving blankets can be hard to find...

Marking your equipment

Marking your gear has many (useful) purposes:
- Identify what is yours
- Find the gear (brightly colored equipment helps)
- Put indicators or 'red flags' on your gear 

First of all make sure whatever you use does not affect your equipment in a negative way. Pay particular attention to personal protective equipment. The glue in stickers/tape and solvents in markers/paint can have effect on certain materials (especially plastics and textiles). Sometimes manufactures will sell specific stickers or markers to mark their products (helmets , rope, slings). Preferably mark your equipment on a part which is not safety related. If you have doubts, you can choose to tie strings or add zip ties with a tag to your equipment, which means there is no solvents of other chemicals interacting. (unless the string was contaminated)  

Second, make sure the markings does not get in the way. It can block the sight to parts of your equipment, both in operating the equipment, as well for inspections of your equipment (wear and tear, damages, etc). If string is used, make sure it won’t cause entanglement or choking hazards.

Third, make sure the markings can handle the environment it is being subjected to. This can be extreme temperatures, temperature swings, exposure to abrasion or even chemical exposure. For example; adding (reflective) tape to firefighting equipment can simply mean that the tape melts the first time you get close to a fire. Meaning you have to clean of the melted goo.

You can make your markings have additional function. Strategic markings can act like warning flags. For instance a visible red line when something is forgotten or a switch is set on life. Markings can also be zipper tabs, making it easier to locate and open a certain compartment. Or just a loop, so you can hang your equipment in storage. 

For finding and identifying equipment I use the following to make my gear stand out:

- Bright neon yellow reflective tape (a thick high quality version, which is also very abrasive resistant).
- Bright red cordage with reflective threads in it.
- Glow in the dark and reflective cordage. (white)
- Glow in the dark and reflective zipper pull tabs.

For safety markings or surfaces which does not allow tape of anything attach to it, without creating problems:
- Permanent markers (works best on rough surfaces, specialist markers are available for certain equipment)
- Nail polish (works best on smooth surfaces)

Note that sometimes you just can’t mark your equipment without causing a problem and sometimes you can only mark things on the inside. 

Keysafes

Need to leave keys out for somebody else or can't carry the key with you? Everybody know the usual hiding place;  under the doormat, behind a plant, in the bumper, on a car tire, etc. Obviously not the most safe methods.

So what do we do when we need to leave a key at a door or car without having the keys stolen? One method of safely leaving a key for somebody else is a keysafe with a number lock.

Keysafes are available in different sizes and shapes. There are versions which are design to bolt on to a structure and those that look like a giant padlock, allowing you the secure the keysafe to a object. There is a obvious risk that people see such keysafes and attack them for the keys. So hide them can't hurt.

Padlock style keysafe.

A keylock design to be mounted on a wall/object

Training rescue personel; the old fashion way

Some things are sometimes best kept simple. One of these things is training people what to do. Sometimes it's explaing structures, how they are made and how to deal with them. Sometimes you want to explain how to follow procedure and why. One simpel methode is the use of models. 

Here is a nice example of a model to explain thatched roof construction and how to fight fires with thatched roofs. Patches of canvas is used to simulate the strips of thatching and is removable from the model to reveal the interieur structure. 

Or just scale models of environments with various kind infrastructure. This is very usefull on teaching how to approach a scene and how to locate everything. Nice things about this particulair setup is the fact that these are actually puzzels. Multiple models can be joint to make a bigger envionment. 

But when do you get a birds eye view of a situation in real life? One way to get the right point of view is have people crawling inside a classroom, but thats not very user friendly for the student. Another simple, yet effective solution is to just put in on top of a extra high table. 

Unintended side effects: Attachment strings and lanyards.

There are plenty of situations when you do not want to lose/drop something: In the water, working with heights or just critical equipment you need and simple can't afford to loose. One method to prevent lose, is to tie it  to something.  This can be a simple string, lanyard or something like a ‘gear keeper’ (retractable cable).

This method does have some problems:

- When the string/lanyard is long, this can cause a entanglement or strangle hazard. A brake away system which fails before this happens can prevent this danger.

- If the string connects two pieces of equipment, which need to be connected to each other be used. The string can cause the pieces of equipment to act like there are connected properly. For example: a belay/ rope backup device which need to be connected to the users using a carabiner. I have seen people attaching a rope backup device (a Petzl ASAP, warning about this on the petzl website) to the rope, but failed to connect it to the harness using the carabiner. He did not notice this, because the string cause the ASAP to follow him as it is suppose too. The string is not strong enough to replace the carabiner making the backup setup useless.

- A sting can get stuck inside various devices and defeat the working parts or cause a device to be left open (example, getting stuck at the gate of a carabiner) or a tangled up lanyard just gets in the way of a button (a swivel helps against this issue). The petzl link already methode above, also shows this danger when using the ASAP.

Note; I have no connection with Petzl, I have worked with Petzl equipment and that is why I knew these instruction of Petzl.

Cheap handcrank lights

I see a lot of people raving about hand crank lights. ‘Crank a few times and when I turn the light on, it will burn of hours’. That is simply not true. A good hand crank light, should have a build in capacitor or battery which will store the energy which has been generated. But this will generally not last more than 15 – 30 minutes, not hours. There is only so much power your arms can produce in a short period of time. Let have  a look at internals of this light and see what we find.

When you take this light apart, you will actually find working sprockets, a free wheelie and a little dynamo connected to the LED. These are connected directly to the LED and are not actually charging anything. So all the light being produced while cranking this light, is the only light you are creating when cranking. 

The switch on top of the light is the switch for the battery part of the light. There are two CR2032 (non-rechargeable) batteries, wired to the LED and the little switch. This makes up for a separate power circuit in the light to battery drive the light. 

The crank part of this light is not really impressive and will drive you nuts when the batteries have gone flat. But at least it does have a working crank system. There are even fake crank (or shake) lights, which doesn’t have a working system at all and only contain a little battery. Which means they are very large and heavy button cell lights. Just like anything else, there are no cheap ways to deal with this. Either buy a proper (expensive) one and crank/shake a lot or just get a proper battery powered one and store plenty of batteries. 

Logistics; keep things simple

People are very good at finding great ways to be lazy. Why do things manually when a machine can do most of the work? Sometimes to a extend which is not even rational or time saving; like people building a robot to get there beer out of there fridge. In normal life, this might not be a big problem. It makes people more productive and prevents injuries (but can also cause to little movement by people).

In emergency management and just regular emergency preparedness, we prepare for situations when infrastructure might be a problem. Maybe there is no power, fuel, water, garbage disposal sewage system, etc.  This means equipment we are using to save labor, might not work. There is a critical choice that needs to be made. Do we make sure we have the equipment, time and additional man power to get your equipment running (and everything need to keep them running as well) or do we take a more basic approach which does not require as much equipment. Equipment means costs to buy them, need to train people to use them, need somebody to maintain them, spare parts and lots of consumables like fuel. A few examples:

Specialist (rescue) equipment: When a certain equipment was not available at a scene, some people will start to advocate to get one of that equipment. This however can present a lot of issues. People need to be trained at how to use them. In the emergency services this means at least one person in every shift should be trained to use them. If you work with volunteers, you need multiple ones, since not everybody can show up every time. This means a lot of added training and time consumed from people. Getting volunteers burdened with more trainings time can cause them to leave. Then there is also the maintenance of the equipment, initial purchase price, cost of modifying a rig or have an additional vehicle.

Power tools: Power tools are great tools to get the job done quickly. However when you can’t plug them in to a socket, you need some more equipment. So a generator is needed to power your tools. A generator cost money to buy, needs spare parts, maintenance and fuel. You also need to drag it with you, so it means it takes up space and labor to get in to the right location. How much time and energy goes this electric setup saves compared to do a job manually.

When you get equipment, know the logistics needed to get it working. I have seen examples where equipment was purchased but nobody want to deal with the additional manpower, training and logistics needed to get actually use it. This is equipment that just sit there doing nothing, a total waste of money. So always make sure you can handle the logistics behind something and make a choice if it’s worth it. Sometimes not having the ideal equipment, but workable equipment is the best choice.