What Should Be Included in My Apartment's Emergency Disaster Kit?

An apartment emergency disaster kit can make dealing with a disaster much less stressful. In the event of a power outage, a tornado, a hurricane, an earthquake or a fire (in the event of a fire, you can grab the kit quickly and go), the kit can provide you with the survival basics you'll need for the first few hours or even days after the event. You may not ever need to use the kit, but it's better to be over-prepared then under-prepared when it comes to disasters.

Food and Water

The core of the emergency disaster kit should be food and water--enough to last about three days. In the event of a disaster, or even a long-term power outage, you may have difficulty accessing stores for a time. It helps to have food and water easily available, so you can worry about other things, while the community works to get the area safe and back to normal again.

The food should be non-perishable; canned and sealed-package foods are the best. For water, you should include 2 to 4 gallon jugs--however much you can comfortably fit into your kit--because you may need the water for washing as well as drinking. Remember to check on your kit every six to twelve months, and replace any food or jugs of water that are past the freshness date.

Flashlights or Lanterns

During most disasters, you'll lose power. If the disaster occurs at night, or the sunlight is otherwise blocked from your apartment, you'll need flashlights or lanterns for everyone in the apartment to find their way around. Candles and matches can work, but are more dangerous and give off less light than flashlights and lanterns. You should swap out the batteries in the flashlights and lanterns once a year, even if you haven't used the disaster kit in that year, as batteries can be drained over time even when not in use.

Extra Batteries

Even if you're vigilant about replacing the batteries in your flashlights or lanterns once a year, you never know if you'll need more batteries for something else, or if the batteries you replaced will turn out to be duds. Just to be on the safe side, include a few extra batteries of each type in your disaster kit and replace those annually as well.

Hand-Operated Can Opener

If you include canned food in your disaster kit, you can't overlook the need for a can opener in your kit. In case you don't have access to your kitchen during the disaster, you'll need a hand-operated can opener in your kit in order to access the food.

Blankets

Blankets can serve a variety of purposes during a disaster. They can keep you warm, provide you something clean and soft to sit on or provide additional cushioning when trying to protect yourself from potential falling debris. Include at least one blanket per family member in the kit.

Gloves and Hats

You could get cold during a disaster, so keep a spare pair of gloves and a hat for each family member in your disaster kit. Even warm climates can get cold at night, especially if you don't have power for heating.