Inside The Inland Empire

The Big One could hit at any time - today, tomorrow, or 10 years from now - but it will hit. Ignoring it won't make the danger any less, and hoping it will hit Los Angeles harder than the Inland Empire won't help either.

What have you done to prepare for The Big One?

Are you prepared? Do you have water set aside? Food? Batteries? Anything? Here are a few things that I have personally done, all at a cost of only $100 or so:

• Secured all the large wobbly furniture in the house
  
• Made a 'earthquake storage locker' out of an old garden-tool cabinet to store earthquake supplies
  
• Stocked up on LOTS of 1 gallon bottles of drinking water (at approx $1 each)
  
• Stocked up on food, batteries, silverware, flashlights, soap, blankets, towels, medical supplies, AM radio, tools, ropes, etc - everything necessary to live on our own for a few days. Remember hurricane Katrina? We could be on our own for a while
  
• Polished up 'old faithful' - My laser-sighted Mossberg-500 riot gun and stocked up on several boxes of low-recoil ammo. If we are on our own for a while, there will be lots of people that weren't prepared. These people will be desperate for food and water. When they see us in the driveway showering with our extra gallons of water things could get hairy.
  
• Every 90 days I check my stockpile and rotate the canned food, etc. Nothing would be worse than finding out right after the Big One that all your Ravioli and Dennison's Chili cans have bulges (i.e.; they're rotten)
  
• Evaluated if it made sense to purchase earthquake insurance. In our case it did.
  

Warnings that the Big One could be closer than we think:

The Desert Sun online has a great collection of warnings to scare us all into getting prepared for the big one. Some of the highlights are:

• The San Andreas fault is overdue for quake
  
• What does an 8.0 earthquake feel like?
  
• Are you ready for THE BIG ONE?
  

For all the stories, and new ones, go to The Desert Sun's Earthquakes in the Desert feature.
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