You Need a GO-bag

If everything goes right, that emergency GO-bag will just sit in a closet somewhere or under a bed for years. Your day-to-day life style won’t be changed if you don’t have a GO-bag. No, you really don’t need a GO-bag...until you do.

GO-bags are like the sense of relief you have for your insurance policy when your car is involved in an accident or someone forgot to put fuel in the oil tank and the pipes in your house froze and burst. You’ve paid for this insurance month after month, hoping you’ll never have to use it. And then you do. Relief. Go-bags are the emergency essentials you have in place when all hell breaks loose so you can take care of yourself and your family. Because there may come a time when you may have to.

One fire department employee for every 537 people - you need to be able to take care of yourself.

• New York City has 8.4 million citizens
• The NYC Fire Department employees number 15,629
• Of that total number, 10,241 are uniformed fire fighters
• 3,621 are uniformed EMS providers
• 1,767 are civilian employees of the Fire Department

So, let’s be generous and take the total number of 15,629 Fire Department employees - that would work out to one fire department employee for every 537 people.  If looking only at the trained emergency responders, there would be one firefighter or EMT for every 1,559 citizens in a city-wide emergency such as Hurricane Sandy or a Hurricane Katrina (you know, ones that have happened) or a man-made disaster.  To be fair, (not relying on alternative facts), police officers number in the thousands in NYC and many will be deployed to assist citizens in distress. Their primary function, however, will be investigative, search and arrest of bad guys and crowd control. What if you don’t need to be rescued or arrested?  What if all you need are a few bandaids? A flashlight? A weather update? A change of clothes for you and your child? An emergency plan? Water? Snacks? Rope to tie your dog to because you left the leash in your haste to get out of your apartment? ...

Do you need a GO-bag? You decide.

*Stats from Wikipedia, 2013.