How Techies Stock Their Disaster Kits
The supplies for when it’s more than a hastily canceled tsunami warning.
A twofold panic washed over Northern California last week. The first was very immediate when everyone’s phones got the same alert: an unexpected tsunami warning sparked by a rare 7.0 magnitude earthquake 40 miles off Cape Mendocino. In the end, it was a false alarm, and the warning was canceled. Yet that’s when the second panic hit, with many techies realizing how little prepared they were for any sort of emergency—let alone a tsunami.
Clearly, everyone’s disaster supplies need burnishing and filling out, so I set off to figure out the best items for them through conversations with experts like Kelle Kroll, an emergency management consultant based in Los Gatos, Calif. She recently worked with a VC firm to assess its new Sand Hill Road offices for disaster preparedness, demarcating proper egress and meeting points, appraising employees for personal preparedness, and providing go bags of emergency supplies to keep under their desks. Such planning has become a fact of life for Kroll’s clients.
“The fires and floods in 2020 and 2021 taught us that we’re really maxing out our resources across the state, so I recommend having enough supplies on hand so you can survive at least 72 hours on your own in case you need to go off-grid or shelter in place,” she said. “With the increased frequency and intensity of disasters, it’s going to be really hard for an employee to come to work and do their job if they’re worried about safety.”
Turnkey Emergency Kits
We’ve come a long way since Y2K when everyone was obsessed with stockpiling shelves and shelves of nonperishables, according to Joel Smernoff, CEO of Black Umbrella, which sells curated emergency kits. “Technology over the last 20 years has really helped with reducing the size of [emergency stores] and making them more reliable and durable,” said Smernoff. “If you gather the right supplies to allow you to live at home off-grid, then you’re in control of your destiny and you’re not on the streets with panicky people or in the supermarkets fighting over a can of peaches.”
Black Umbrella’s “Sanctuary Box,” for instance, includes a “comprehensive emergency solution” neatly packed in a 60-liter Yeti cargo box—it includes a portable power station, headlamps, a Schumacher car inverter to charge devices from a car’s battery, a Geiger counter and enough supplies “to live comfortably off-grid without water, electricity or communication for extended periods.” It costs $3,995. The Preppi Prepster 3-Day Emergency Kit Bag is a bit more economical at $495 a pop and includes some softer touches like a Malin+Goetz toiletries kit and a bar of chocolate. It comes in a monogrammable bag that once made Oprah Winfrey’s annual “Favorite Things” list. When in doubt (or when purchasing in bulk for the office), the Red Cross offers Survival Kits for about $65 that you can easily stow in a car or under a desk.
More Water Than You’d Think
Current Federal Emergency Management Agency guidance advises planning on one gallon of water per person, per day in case of emergency, but “that’s actually, like, the bare minimum,” said Smernoff. He recommends closer to two gallons per person, per day—and for a family of three or four, or an office of 20, that can quickly start adding up.
For starters, if you have the space, Smernoff recommends a Uline drum (55 gallons, $95) or tank (330 gallons, $635). High-end clients looking for a long-term off-grid solution might even want to invest in portable, solar-powered reverse osmosis filtration systems ($2,889), which can produce up to 200 gallons of potable water each day. For something even more lightweight and portable (and economical), a $46 Sawyer water filtration system does the trick —and can be easily put in a backpack.
Backup Communicators
Payments, banking, emergency notifications, locating loved ones—it’s all done via our smartphones, and if and when the grid goes down during a disaster, the ability to stay connected will be worth its weight in gold. “We have a lot of high-end clients investing in satellite phones,” said Smernoff. “A good one, like the Iridium Extreme 9575, will cost about $1,000. And even if the phones go down, one of those will always work as long as you can see the sky.” Some good old-fashioned walkie-talkies could be useful, like these heavy-duty ones from Retevis for $136. And to address Smernoff’s earlier point about technology having come a long way in terms of size, durability and portability, you can now access high-speed internet virtually anywhere via the highly mobile Starlink Mini, which offers fast download speeds— and as it’s not much larger than a piece of printer paper, you can easily transport it if you need to relocate in a pinch.
For When the Grid Goes Down
Electricity is essential for communication, illumination and even powering medical devices— and power outages are common enough even when there aren’t earthquakes and tsunamis at play. “I ran a training recently and met someone who during a catastrophic outage used his personal generator as a hub for his entire community,” said Kroll. Something of that scale would require significant space and investment: Kohler makes a very good one.
“But we’re also seeing more and more people install Tesla Powerwalls in their homes,” said Kroll. Depending on home size, a Powerwall can cover a single household for about a day. Both a generator and Powerwall are designed to keep you sheltered in place, however; if you’re evacuating, something more portable is essential.
Of course, in the event of an emergency, mobility is key. Having a well-charged power bank like an Anker 733 ($80) handy will help keep your devices charged in the short term. Have some bigger payloads to fulfill? An EcoFlow Portable Power Station ($2,099) offers quick, powerful, highly portable power. It can also be upgraded with a portable solar charger ($400) or an alternator ($300) that turns excess power from your electric vehicle into battery recharging—so you can drive longer distances without relying on fossil fuels or an EV recharging network that might very well be down.
The Ultimate Exit Strategy
Another practical item to include in your disaster quiver is an insurance policy. Most health insurance plans will get you to the nearest acceptable facility in an emergency, but what if every hospital in the Bay Area is at capacity, or worse? “Our Bay Area tech and venture capital clients are often small- to medium-size enterprises, and they’re acutely aware of costs and risk,” said John Gobbels, chief operating officer of Medjet, a global air medical transport and travel security membership program. “Footing a $200,000 bill out of pocket to get someone moved to a hospital at home might seriously hurt cash flow, and not getting them home can create a serious duty of care issue.”
An entry-level Medjet Assist membership will cover an all-expenses-paid air medical transport both domestically and internationally in case of emergency to a hospital of your choosing, and starts at just $315 annually for individuals, $425 for families. Crisis response firm Global Rescue takes that offering one step further, selling wSecurity Memberships, which provide consultations and evacuation services from a team of military special operations veterans in the event of disasters, terrorism and civil unrest. Both companies offer enterprise solutions tailored to corporate travel, too—so visitors on work travel to and from the Bay Area can be prepared the next time disaster strikes.
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