Car Emergency Supplies

Last year, I started building an emergency kit for our house.  It is pretty much complete, I just haven’t taken the time to photograph the project and blog about it.  I came across several helpful blog posts via Pinterest that steered me in the right direction while gathering the supplies.  I have always kept a lot of the things recommended on hand anyway, because the ‘always be prepared’ motto was a part of growing up in my family.  But now the supplies are all together in one place so they are easy to find in case of an emergency.

The same preparedness has always been a part of my car as well.  Since I first started driving, I have always had a tote of emergency supplies in my car’s trunk.  It includes two ready-made kits specifically for cars with things like first aid items, a help sign, fix-a-flat, tools specific for cars, a flashlight, poncho, and jumper cables.  In addition to that, I have always kept a jump-start box (in case there isn’t anyone around to jump my car off), a blanket, paper towels, an ice scraper, and a 4-way tire iron (a lot of cars come with skimpy, inefficient tire irons).

After reading this blog post, I decided to add a few things to my stash.  I had never really thought about having a road flare in the car for visibility, but even if I had, I don’t think I would have wanted something that has the danger of fire associated with it inside my car.  Evidently, a police officer invented the PowerFlare® for this reason.  It is about the size of a hockey puck and uses LED lights to emit bright light in all directions.  I ordered one for each of us from Amazon.

The blog post also reminded me that if at some point I needed to abandon my car in an emergency, I might be wearing less than comfortable shoes for walking.  So I put together a little personal tote of things I might want in that kind of situation.  A pair of tennis shoes, socks, gloves, a poncho, a bottle of water, bug repellent wipes, hand wipes, a travel-sized roll of Charmin, and a hair clip.  It also occurred to me that I don’t want to have to worry about whether the batteries in the flashlight from my ready-made kit are dead during an emergency, so I have ordered a small hand-crank charged LED flashlight to add to this box.