What are we doing about being prepared in times of emergencies???

Family,
The following is an email I received from one of my friends.  This was a forward from someone who lives in Japan and just went through the awful earthquakes and tsunamies.   If you live in Utah, you must know that it's not if, but when, we will have a big earthquake ourselves.  Scary stuff!  I need to get more prepared myself and if anyone knows where to find kitchen items (for not too much), like blenders and such that are hand-crank, please let me know.  I am also going to be looking for more camping equipment and I will also be in the market soon for a propane room heater.  Now that winter is over, hopefully I can find a room heater on clearance.  Candles will be on my shopping list and I plan on getting the big pillar type.  Also need to be looking for a hand-crank flashlight or two. 
Ok, here's the letter from someone in Japan:

Preparedness insights and thoughts from an LDS family on a military
base living through the crisis in Japan. Some of these are good
practical reminders for each of our families….


My cousin has some friends in his ward whose daughter/family live on
an military base in Japan. He shared an email with us from the
daughter on her experiences and advise for everyone to be prepared.
Here it is:

The earthquakes (aftershocks) haven't stopped and I spent all night
last night having nightmares about running from collapsing and
buckling buildings. The kids are on edge and tantrums are at an all
time high. They keep busy playing during the day, but when it gets
dark and we have to ration flashlights and candles it gets extra hard
to keep the peace.

A few things I've been wanting to tell people and note for the future:

*Get an old school, corded phone. If the power goes out, your
cordless wont work. We were lucky to have a corded phone upstairs
which helped Doug coordinate with the Branch President to get
accountability of church members. (The phones have worked on-base
off and on, but we were never able to get a call through to the
states.)

*Speaking of accountability, in an emergency, if you're going to leave
your house--leave a note on the door saying where you are going so
when guys from church or work coming looking, they'll know where you
are.

*When the power went out, people off base couldn't get their cars out
of their garage. Turns out there is a special crank to use but most
of our friends didn't have it or know what it was. Luckily Tami had
parked outside and was able to get her kids to our house Friday.

*We've been cooking with our camping equipment. Note to self: Buy
a 20 pack of small propane tanks. We've also used our outdoor BBQ
(in the cold) and I'm wishing I had a spare tank of Propane for that.
(We still don't have power and don't know when it will come back on
On Base. Estimates have said 24 hours (we're way past that) to 1
week, to indefinite.)

*Do you have an extra refill of your prescriptions in your 72 hour
kit? It's terrifying to imagine running out of the things you take
every day. Also, the thought of my kids getting sick and not having
enough Children's Advil and/or Tylenol made me pretty nervous until I
verified we had some of each.

*For ONCE I was glad to be doing Dave Ramsey yesterday when we had
plenty of cash on hand to shop at the commissary. But we also have a
cash and yen emergency fund hidden in the house for back-up which was
very comforting.

*While I'm making notes to myself: Buy a hand crank wheat grinder
and or blender! (We have a freezer full of frozen fruit to make
smoothies but no way to blend anything.)

*Flashlights are a pain. All of our stupid Rayovac
batteries that I had stored for an emergency, LEAKED! So
the flashlights are all slowly dying, being over used by the children,
and being misplaced. The best source of light the last two nights
has been the pillar candles I've had in the cupboard for fancy table
settings. They seem to burn pretty slow and shed a lot of light.
I've gone through 3 and have 1 left. Wish I had a 20 pack of those
in my 72 hour pack. It would be nice not to worry about running out.
Small, light weight, energy efficient lanterns would be nice too.

*Also, my next house will have a wood burning fire place. This all
would have been much easier if we could have been warm.

*Also, I'm buying all my kids a down comforter. We have one on our
bed and we've been fine at night, but the kids need 20 blankets piled
up to stay warm. (Actually, the two big boys each have a two layer
fleece blanket which is pretty warm, but unfortunately, they're not
very big.)

(Poor little Gray had to spend yesterday in his snow suit to stay
warm. The poor little guy must be sensing the stress because he's
been quite out of sorts. He's always shivering (even when bundled)
and very clingy. The kids are all confused and upset but mostly
hanging in there. Like I said, it's been nice to have friends to
keep us company.)

Sorry, I'm rambling on and on but I've had all this stress for the
last two days and my main way to process is by writing my thoughts
down. So I've been going a little nuts feeling so disconnected.

A few more random thoughts:
*The last two days this thought kept running through my head "All are
safely gathered in.". I can't express enough how glad I was/am to
have my family around me. Please say a prayer for our many many
friends with deployed spouses. This is a very stressful time here
and it's really sucky for them to be apart. Also, please pray for
all the Japanese people who are missing or displaced. So sad.

*We were very blessed on base to have running (freezing cold) water.
Off base, sewer lines broke and contaminated the water supply they
weren't even supposed to touch it.

*Today we sang "I Need Thee Every Hour" at church. Has a lot of
meaning right now.

Okay, there are other people who need to use this computer. Everyone
on base is coming off base to try to contact family. -