Episode transcript
HARRY: One of the things that we love to talk about, that’s just one small step short of a chainsaw, are pruning saws. So the one we have recommended forever is called the Pocketboy.
ROSIE: Silky Pocketboy!
CHRISTINE: That does not sound like a handsaw, let me just tell you.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin, and you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
ROSIE: So, fam, we’re trying something new today. We are re-airing an episode that we originally released last fall about emergency preparedness. It’s sadly something that we should all be more — and are more — aware of, I think, with climate change increasing the intensity of certain types of disasters like wildfires, and especially precipitation, extreme flooding, extreme snowstorms.
CAIRA: Yeah, since we first aired this episode, there have been a number of severe natural disasters across the country. Just to name two, the LA wildfires and the Texas Hill Country floods. It’s scary. But getting prepared before something happens is the absolute best way to be ready if it does actually happen, and you don’t have to panic-buy anything.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. Wirecutter has a ton of great coverage around emergency preparation. We’ve been covering this for years. We have really great, specific recommendations. And we just published a whole suite of new coverage around this topic. One thing I’m really excited about is a new tool we published, which is an emergency-toolkit builder. It will build you a customized list of emergency supplies that you should have based on your family dynamic, the kinds of disasters you might face, whether you want to stay at home, shelter in place, or whether you want to evacuate. It gives very specific kinds of things that you should have on hand. We also have some other coverage on building out an emergency pantry, how to pick out a generator. We even have this very interesting piece from two of our Wirecutter writers who survived the LA fires, on the things that they learned that they would want anyone to do in advance of any kind of disaster that they’re facing. So it’s a very, very cool group of articles we just published, and we’ll drop links in the show notes.
CAIRA: Yeah, it’s so helpful. And because we just published this new tool, we decided to actually re-air this episode with one of our colleagues who knows a lot about emergency preparedness. His name is Harry Sawyers, and Harry is a senior editor who’s overseen our emergency-prep coverage for the last five years.
ROSIE: I personally found this conversation to be hugely helpful. As you guys know, I had bought an emergency-prep kit that was an all-in-one. And after the conversation, I realized that a lot of the things in the kit aren’t things that would actually be practical for my family and my family’s situation. So I was able to go back and put together a kit that made more sense for me and for us.
CAIRA: Yeah, so we’re going to take a quick break right now, and when we’re back, you’ll hear our conversation with Harry Sawyers from 2024.
CAIRA: Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Today we’re talking with Harry Sawyers, Wirecutter senior editor covering emergency preparation. Wirecutter has robust coverage on how to prepare for a range of natural disasters, from wildfires to earthquakes to hurricanes, and Harry is the one who edits all of this coverage. We’re going to be talking about a guide on our site, it’s called “The Best Emergency Preparedness Supplies.” We’ve got a link to that in our show notes, if you want to follow along. Harry also knows a ton about home repair and upkeep, which is relevant for flooding, and I’m super excited to hear about that, because my bedroom is in a glorified basement. Woo-hoo! Yay!
CHRISTINE: Hey, Harry, welcome to the show!
HARRY: Hello!
CHRISTINE: It’s great to have you here. You’ve got some experience with natural disasters in your life. You live in LA, which is, like, ground zero for fires and earthquakes and all sorts of stuff. But you also grew up in Georgia. What was it like growing up with tornadoes?
HARRY: Well, one thing about living in LA and being worried about earthquakes is, you never really know when to plan for anything. And, you know, not that it was easier to plan for a tornado, but at least you could kind of see it coming. You know, you had storms on the horizon, you had the forecast, and you kind of had a little window of time to prepare. So the mindset is a little different, where it’s not “You always need to be ready. And it could strike at any moment.” It’s more like “24 hours. Get your stuff together, and let’s get serious about this incoming storm.”
CHRISTINE: Did you ever have to, like, hide out during a tornado?
HARRY: A lot. I spent countless hours in basements and huddled in school hallways, just waiting out tornado sirens and warnings, and it was terrifying and dull at the same time.
CAIRA: But, Harry, in your team’s reporting, you guys always recommend that before you buy anything, people should actually have a communication plan. Can you walk us through what that might look like in real time?
HARRY: Yeah, one of the things that is necessary, in addition to all the gear you need to have, is just what some experts call “soft resiliency,” which is just, you know, knowing your neighbors, maybe being in a group text together, having some means of communicating with people around you, having a way to communicate with people out of town that would be concerned about you and letting them know how you intend to communicate. And just, really, just having a plan that involves everyone that might be affected by you being affected, so that they can at least stay in touch with you and, you know, provide help if needed, or at least just be reassured that you’re doing okay.
CHRISTINE: Is there any kind of planning you should do … for instance, I have a family. Do I need to make some kind of plan with them? Like, where we meet or what to do in different kinds of emergencies?
HARRY: Yeah, a lot of folks recommend just having a plan, I mean, kind of whatever works for your family. A lot of the thing with this advice that we’ll get into is, it’s consistent in that the sort of basic framework of what you need to do is pretty similar from place to place. But then from that point, things diverge into all sorts of specific considerations about, you know, where your house is, and the type of house, and all that. And then if you have kids, then, yeah, I mean, what your family needs are, who’s going to be responsible, where you’re going to meet, how you’re going to do it. You know, getting your kids involved in the planning is just a great way to reassure everybody. Part of the preparation is just having a mindset and having a plan to begin with; where you’re going to meet and how you’re going to be in touch is a big part of that.
ROSIE: I remember when we were kids, the local fire department encouraged families, like, in the elementary school to go home, make a plan, work with your parents. Or I guess maybe they were encouraging parents to work with their kids to make a plan. And I remember, we had a plan, and it was, I think, fairly barebones. But it was just that, like, “If something happens, get your brother, meet at this place.” And then, you know, I like to assume they had a plan after that, because I think that’s where we kind of jumped off.
HARRY: Yeah. I mean, for us, it was “If the storm’s coming, meet in the basement. If the house catches on fire, meet at the mailbox.”
ROSIE: Meet at the mailbox.
ROSIE: And Harry, we’ve referenced the guide a couple times, but can I ask: How do you and your team approach writing a guide like this? Because obviously there are many different kinds of disasters someone might be dealing with.
HARRY: You know, one thing with this coverage, just to be clear with you guys … there’s like, you know, on the one extreme end, there’s, like, a bunker person who has, like, just this extensive collection of tools. And then if you’re super, super prepared, there’s, like, a version of it where you’re almost like an isolated person, then you’re going to really be self-reliant and fend for yourself. And that’s a mindset. But it’s so extensive and expensive that it’s just not all that realistic for everybody to consider. And then shifting a little bit, there’s a huge range in these scenarios. I mean, if you look at the numbers, and you have a handful of devastated homes that have been destroyed by tornadoes or completely flooded. And then you have hundreds of thousands of people without power, and their homes are essentially fine, but they’re without power for an indefinite period of time, depending on how long it takes to restore that power. And so we’re really trying to span this huge range of needs. And we have things like fire starters and, you know, like, almost wilderness-survival tools in the mix, because it’s not inappropriate to consider that. But some of it comes across as so extreme that it feels inappropriate in the context of, like, for you, who have just lost power for maybe a week. You might not need to go out and start a fire to deal with your needs, but you sure are going to want to be able to charge phones, have some light to get to the bathroom, be able to try to keep your food fresh, and you’re still living in your home. It’s just a really uncomfortable situation, and you need to be able to endure that using whatever means necessary. So, one of the reasons it’s so broad is because we just want to give people sort of the full range of options and let them determine what they need and kind of make their own decisions about what to buy. But, you know, it’s a topic that’s kind of difficult to talk about, because it’s just, like, the needs just vary so much, even within the same event.
ROSIE: And they’re so personal, too. All right, so someone wants to start making an emergency-preparedness kit. What kind of container would you recommend they put all of this stuff in? Because we’re about to kind of jump into talking about a lot of things you might want to think about getting, but this seems like a good first step. What do you want to put it in?
HARRY: Well, the first thing that it needs to be is just accessible. And for some people, maybe a waterproof storage bin would make sense. For others, maybe something like a backpack or a go bag would make more sense. But whatever it is, it’s got to be reachable in the time of the crisis. So I was just talking to another editor here about earthquake prep and how her stuff is in her garage. And she’s concerned that if a huge earthquake hit — she’s in the San Francisco Bay Area — that it would, like, pancake her house and flatten her garage, and then she wouldn’t be able to reach her stuff. Our stuff in LA is in a closet that we feel would probably be accessible. It all really depends on the configuration of your house and kind of what you think you can get to. And if you had a shed or something that you felt was relatively protected from a situation, if you couldn’t enter the building afterward, then that would be great. In Georgia, things were in the basement, they were just kind of down there, where we would be anyway. And it was a mix of, you know, real legit emergency-prep items and also just, like, the same old board games that we busted out every time a storm came through.
ROSIE: Is there a situation where you would ever want to have something outside of your home accessible, like outside of the basement or outside of the actual home?
HARRY: I mean, a lot of people keep items in their car if they’re, you know, if it’s more of a bug-out-bag situation and they’re just planning to evacuate, they would just keep it ready to go. And so you wouldn’t have to gather it up if you had just, you know, minutes to make your way.
CHRISTINE: So we’re going to talk about all the things that you might want to have in a kit. And I would imagine some of these things are maybe things people already have in their homes that they just need to gather together. But in our emergency-preparation guide, we kind of bucket the different types of emergency supplies you might want to have into five basic categories we want to talk about today. The first one is food and water.
[SFX] water pour
CHRISTINE: Second is first aid.
[SFX] pill bottle
CHRISTINE: Third, you want to have light.
[SFX] flashlight click
CHRISTINE: Fourth, power and communication.
[SFX] electronic hum
CHRISTINE: And the fifth is tools.
[SFX] handsaw
CHRISTINE: Now walk us through these categories and what you recommend in each. Let’s start with water and food.
[SFX] water pour
HARRY: Yeah, I mean, a lot of the experts we talk to really begin with water and food as the kind of first and foremost consideration, because that’s the most crucial need that you’re going to have to meet after something happens.
CHRISTINE: What would you want to have on hand for water in an emergency?
HARRY: So with water, even though it seems like a specific thing, it really varies how you go about it, depending on how you would normally get your water and what kind of threat you expect to face. I mean, the most basic way to do it would just be to stockpile water in big, impervious containers that you can just, you know, keep and refresh and rotate out as needed. For other folks, it might make more sense to freeze water; if you’re expecting a loss of power, you can prolong the freshness of your food when you do lose power and, you know, give you some potable water to drink. For other folks, it might make sense to get a filtration system that you can use contaminated water in. And for others, it might make sense to look at purification tablets or some way to treat water.
CHRISTINE: Is there an amount, like, a recommended amount of water you should have on hand?
HARRY: So FEMA recommends a gallon per person per day.
CAIRA: FEMA being the Federal Emergency Management Agency, right?
HARRY: Yeah. And you’re going to need to look at at least a three-day supply to just have a basic preparation set up. And ideally you could get by for more, like, two weeks.
CHRISTINE: Okay, great. And if you, you know, let’s say you’re in the mindset of just prepping your basement with, like, all this water or whatever, can you just fill it up once and you’re done and you can just wait? Or is there some time period that water goes … I mean, I hate to say, but does water go bad in containers, or should you be changing out the water?
HARRY: One of the things about emergency prep that is so difficult for people is that it’s not just a one-and-done thing, it’s really more of a practice and a routine. And even water … you think you’ve got your water covered, but in fact, really, six months is the cutoff that FEMA recommends for the amount of time that it’s really able to be used for any purpose, drinking and cooking. So for a lot of folks, you know, the challenge becomes “How do I get into a practice where I’m really thinking about this and where I’m able to maintain my supplies, whether it’s water or food as well?” and all the other things that need to be just kind of continually thought of. And how do you stay in that mindset when you’d probably rather not think about an emergency at all?
CHRISTINE: Do you think, Harry, that it’s worth investing in specific water bottles that are, like, for emergency situations? We have these blue, like —
HARRY: Yeah, they’re called Aqua-Tainer.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Is it worth getting those, or can you just get by with buying a bunch of gallons from the supermarket?
HARRY: I like the containers because, I mean, they’re 7-gallon, so they’re pretty big. They’re balanced really nicely. I don’t know if you’ve ever used, like, a water-cooler bottle, but it’s pretty unwieldy, the handles on the side versus these containers with the handles on the top. So you know, you’re lugging it around. I mean, it is upwards of 60 to 70 pounds. So it’s not easy to lift, but it is nicely balanced and just has a couple of convenience features. There’s a little valve that just makes it easier to pour, and the plastic is just really thick, so it’s durable. It can withstand things falling on it. You don’t get UV light in there. So there’s just other kinds of protection that has.
CAIRA: What about a personal water filter? Like, I’ve heard about these LifeStraws. It’s all over my TikTok with the preppers, who are like, “If you don’t have a supply of water on hand, then this thing can make any non-potable water drinkable,” essentially, right?
HARRY: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the LifeStraw itself that we see advertised is really kind of a backpacker’s tool. And it totally … it works. The filtration media is tested. It’s reliable. That is a pretty small amount of water, per use. And so for a single person, it could be totally adequate. LifeStraw does make a larger filtration system that we’ve tested, which is, you know, really capable of producing an amount of water that a family or a couple of families on a street could use. And it’s a bit more of an investment. But yeah, their technology is, you know, it’s proven.
CAIRA: The picture that they have on Amazon cracks me up, because it’s just a dude in a creek sucking out of the straw. Like you would do that. You trust it?
HARRY: I think if I were going to use it, I would probably try to gather up some water and let sediment settle out and then try to just filter, kind of like a little less sediment-rich water. But, I mean, that’s what the product is designed to do.
CHRISTINE: Harry, part of this first category in addition to water is also food. So what would you want to have on hand when it comes to food for an emergency?
HARRY: I mean, you’re going to want to have things that are appealing to eat, so things that you would normally want to go through and just shelf-stable versions of that. You’ll need canned foods, you need a can opener, and you’re just going to need to have something that can get you by for a while.
CHRISTINE: Great. So you don’t necessarily need to go out and get special food for an emergency.
CAIRA: Don’t be an aspirational shopper!
CHRISTINE: Don’t be an aspirational shopper. But Harry, what you’re basically saying is, get things that, you know, basically get things that you like to eat. You don’t want to have a bunch of stuff in your pantry that your family doesn’t like. That’ll just sit there forever, and you may not want to eat it in an emergency anyways.
HARRY: Yeah. And ideally you’re rotating that stuff out, too. Just kind of keeping it fresh and just once in a while having, you know, “canned-food gourmet” and restocking everything you’ve got in there, and maybe testing some stuff out and making some improvements for things you might like better.
CAIRA: Taste-testing your apocalypse menu, I like that.
CHRISTINE: I think that’s a good plan.
CAIRA: So the second category here is first aid.
[SFX] pill bottle
CAIRA: I’m wondering, because I don’t want to buy anything new, but: I do have this very old first-aid kit that I threw under my kitchen sink, and now it’s soggy because obviously my kitchen sink leaks. Do I need to replace that? Can I use it?
ROSIE: That’s a rhetorical question, right, Caira?
CAIRA: I don’t know, like, maybe there’s a chance.
HARRY: You do need to keep an eye on expiration dates. I was recently digging through my backpacking backpack, and I found some medicine that expired in 2007, so I probably would not be taking that. But you need to look at that. And, you know, we recommend a lot of prestocked first-aid kits, which are just pretty useful to have on hand for general needs. But there are also ways to supplement those kits with things that are more particular to your needs. And certainly for any prescription medications — that’s a part of all the recommendations, is just have your medications sorted out.
ROSIE: What are the other everyday things? Like, is it … you know, I assume hand sanitizer is one of them.
HARRY: Hand sanitizer comes up. I mean, if you have very limited water, you’re going to want to use sanitizer to preserve your water supplies. Mosquitoes get really bad, especially in severe storm situations, when you have standing water. So bug spray is on a lot of experts’ lists as a top-of-mind item to have. And then, you know, just for cleanup and kind of starting your aftermath work. Just an endless amount of heavy-duty garbage bags, very useful contractor bags, for just cleaning up debris, cleaning up storm branches and things that have come down. Or also you’re just splitting them open to use them as tarps to drag things around and maybe even, you know, cover a few things for emergency waterproofing right as the storm approaches.
ROSIE: And then the other thing that we all hopefully have on hand based on the last several years, masks. Right?
HARRY: Yeah. I mean, that’s something that in wildfire concerns are just a constant for smoke inhalation. But just, you know, in general, it can just be kind of a useful thing to have, you know, air quality can get compromised.
CAIRA: Okay, I feel like I do have most of those things at home, actually. So you don’t have to buy everything new, just maybe a few select things.
CHRISTINE: I mean, I feel like half this stuff or most of this stuff is in my camping gear that I barely ever use. But I should go check the expiration dates. But I’ve got a lot of this stuff already.
ROSIE: Why would you go camping?
CHRISTINE: I mean, Rosie, I am an aspirational camper, as well.
CAIRA: We’re going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, we’re going to talk about keeping things lit during an emergency. But, like, not fun lit. Like literally lit.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. Like, light.
CAIRA: And how to keep your devices running during an emergency. Be right back.
CAIRA: Welcome back to The Wirecutter Show. Our guest this episode is Harry Sawyers, Wirecutter senior editor overseeing all of the site’s emergency-prep coverage.
CHRISTINE: Before the break, we discussed how to create an emergency-communication plan and the first two categories of basics that you should really have on hand, and those include food and water and your first-aid setup. These are going to be helpful in any kind of emergency or natural disaster. So now we’re going to get into number three: light.
[SFX] flashlight click
CHRISTINE: When I was a kid, I lived in the country. The power would go out all the time, and we had kerosene lamps. They seem kind of, in retrospect, kind of dangerous. Is there a better option these days than keeping, like, live flame going inside your home?
HARRY: Well, I don’t know if I can reproduce that warm kerosene glow, but one of the things that keeps people able to stock their kits and moving forward toward preparation is just recommending things that are just useful in day-to-day life and also in an emergency. And so one of the more popular items in our kit recommendations is this flashlight that’s part of our flashlight guide. We’ve tested against a lot of others, and we landed on ThruNight Archer 2A V3. And one of the great things about it is, it has this Firefly mode that can just project this really dim light, and the batteries can last for days with it like that. And so in routine power outages, a lot of our testers have hung it in the bathroom as kind of a night-light just so you can see your way through there. And it’s just a really powerful beam when you need to just actually use it like a regular flashlight for finding something. It’s just once you start using it, you just really never go back to the flashlight on your phone. It’s just so much better. In addition to a flashlight, sometimes you really need your hands free, especially if you’re dealing with some floodwater, and you’re dealing with some cleanup. So our headlamp recommendation is one of those things that just comes in handy a lot. I was just talking to a staff member whose house has been flooded a few times, and she picked up the headlamp. And it was just a revelation for her just how much easier it was to just get down there and deal with things with her hands free. And another thing that we have found when we’re interviewing people post-disaster, especially when there’s floods, are floating lanterns, which was kind of a new item for us and something that we’ve just been testing now.
ROSIE: What are they?
CAIRA: What do they look like?
HARRY: Probably a little like Christine’s old kerosene lamps, but, you know, way more plastic, way more waterproof.
CHRISTINE: Like, it’s got, like, a bulb at the bottom and, like, a kind of like a hurricane-lantern type on the top.
CAIRA: And you hold it like an old man going “Who goes there?”
HARRY: Yeah, you go … you go down in the crypt, and you shine your light, bring up a couple of bottles of port. They’re handy, too, because they’re a little techier, and they have a little charger on there. There’s a USB on a lot of them. They can charge with a small solar panel. And we’ve tested it, and it works. You know, one of our intentions with a lot of this material is to just do more on-the-ground reporting in the aftermath of disasters. This one is more a mix of staged testing, which is super useful. I mean, the solar lanterns, testing was set up, and our correspondent Ellen Airhart tested them in a bathtub. You know, immersed them a little, left them standing there, pushed them around, and just kind of re-created some rough conditions. But more so than a lot of guides, the reason the staged testing even happened was just due to firsthand reporting and just seeing what people were actually using in the field.
ROSIE: So we’re moving to this fourth category, which is power.
[SFX] electronic hum
ROSIE: I remember after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the lower part of Manhattan was out of power for days. You know, there were people coming uptown to charge their phones. People were running extension cords out of their windows to let other people charge their phones. It was a mess. So what should you have on hand if the power goes out?
HARRY: Yeah. Sandy was a wake-up call for us, too. At the time, we had some battery backup. But things have come a long way in the past 12 years. I mean, there’s always gas generators that are just the kind of tried-and-true for certain people, depending on your living situation. If you can use those outdoors, if you have the space, the ability to store gas, then a generator is by far the preferred method, just in terms of how much time you can get out of it and how much power you can get out of it. But generators are not for everybody. We’ve seen a ton of development in rechargeable and power inverters that can use power-tool batteries and portable power stations that we’ve tested as part of our powering coverage. And you can get, you know, sometimes days of use out of them. But one thing that people almost in any living situation might want to consider are any portable solar panels that can just plug and play, go out on the balcony, put them out in the window, out in the yard, and just generate a limited amount of power, but certainly enough to get a phone charged, enough to get a lamp running, if you just need a little bit of light to supplement your flashlight and headlamp operation. One of the ones we recommend in our emergency-prep guide is one that we’ve really been using for years, called the Big Blue 28 Watt. It’s a USB solar charger. It is not the newest, but it’s really reliable, and I think it’s a great starting point for a lot of people who are just kind of maybe new to the idea of a little foldable, portable solar panel. If anyone just wants to have just a basic step toward preparation and just have something that they can rely on, it’s a great place to start. And really, like the flashlight, it is something that you may find useful in your day-to-day life if you’re camping, absolutely.
ROSIE: How do they work, and what do they actually look like?
HARRY: The Big Blue is a smaller one, and that’s one of the reasons we recommend it. It can easily just tuck into an emergency kit or a bag. It’s quite portable. And how they work … I mean, they just, you know, they’re just little solar panels. They collect power. You can bank it if you have a place to store it. If you have a power bank, that’s probably the most versatile way to do it, because then you can just really optimize conditions. You don’t have to just, like, sit out there in the blazing sun yourself.
ROSIE: The solar panel connects to a power bank to collect the power that is coming from the sun. And then you would take the power bank and go charge your phone or something like that.
HARRY: And run things off the power bank. And a lot of the panels that we recommend, you can plug directly into the panel.
ROSIE: Oh, wow.
HARRY: So that’s a convenience. But again, you’re kind of out in the sun.
CAIRA: That’s pretty cool.
HARRY: It’s so much better than nothing. Like, being able to generate just a trickle of a charge on a phone, I mean, just for the functionality of it and also just the reduction of anxiety. Even if you don’t have cell service at the time, it’s usually one of the first things to go. Just knowing that you’re not out on a limb with no way to charge a dying battery is just, I don’t know … we’re so reliant on our phones. I think it’s just if you can just take that off the table of all the anxieties you’re dealing with in the aftermath of a storm as a sort of a side benefit, just to be able to run lamps and other small electronics as needed. You know, I don’t even think I’d even be able to get anything done at my house, because my kids would be hounding me about their iPads the entire time, and so I would at least be able to charge that and then focus on how I’m going to feed everybody that night.
CAIRA: Okay, so what if you don’t have cell service or a TV or anything, but you want to keep up with what’s going on? What would you recommend in that situation?
HARRY: We love our emergency weather radios. The Midland ER310 is a stalwart. Emergency weather radios are one of these categories that I never really gave much thought to before I got into this coverage, and it just came up again and again very consistently with a lot of experts. And so we tested some, and we could really see why their hand crank, which is kind of fun for a little while … you know, they have batteries as well, so they can run on batteries, but if push comes to shove, you can just make it have power. They’re just, you know, long-range radios that are just tuned to weather bands and can just give you some, you know, what we’re talking about, a serious disaster where you’re getting, you know, emergency messages from the local authorities. You’ll be able to at least receive that and just have a sense of what’s going on and what the rescue efforts are looking like.
CHRISTINE: Fun fact: These radios are also really fun for little kids. They find them very fun. I have one, and my daughters love to play with it.
ROSIE: Crank, crank, crank!
CAIRA: If your iPad is dead.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, it’s “dead.” Go play with the weather radio.
ROSIE: It’s an annual favorite when you see stations doing pledge —
CHRISTINE: Oh, I got mine from WNYC. Thank you, WNYC!
ROSIE: Shout out to WNYC, for sure.
CHRISTINE: All right, this brings us to our final category, tools.
[SFX] handsaw
Harry, you are the person I always go to on staff when I have some kind of question about, like, what tool I should get. But if somebody is not a handy person, they don’t have a woodshop or a bunch of tools in their garage, what are the tools someone might want to consider investing in to be ready for an emergency?
HARRY: We often talk about starting with a multi-tool. Just again, it’s so useful. People carry them every day. You may not be the kind of person that thinks you need a screwdriver in your pocket at all times, but one thing we hear is, a lot of people just get so accustomed to having that tool on them that we published an ode to this one tool, the Leatherman Skeletool CX that the writer described as feeling naked without. So it’s a good place to start. It’s just a really basic thing. It’s a great gift if you are looking for somebody that needs it. It’s a stripped-down version of a Leatherman that just has a knife, pliers, and some driver bits, just to meet the most basic needs. And it’s one of the things we feature in our multi-tool coverage. And we have all-featured tools, too, that can do more if you feel like that’s not enough for you. One thing that always happened with severe storms in Georgia was, you would have downed trees; downed trees would hit power lines and cause power outages, and they would block roads. And the advice often was to stay away from it, especially if there’s a downed power line. But for the other 80% or so of all these downed branches that are on people’s properties, they’ve got to just clear them out and start cleaning up. We have coverage on some electric chainsaws that are super capable, and they’re wonderful tools that may be overkill for just a few small branches. And one of the things that we love to talk about, that’s just one small step short of a chainsaw, are pruning saws. We like ones by Silky. My longtime collaborator Doug Mahoney thinks I am sponsored by Silky, because I’m constantly talking about Silky saws. But they are amazing. So the one we have recommended forever is called the Pocketboy.
ROSIE: Silky Pocketboy!
CHRISTINE: That does not sound like a handsaw, let me just tell you.
HARRY: It’s a very capable Pocketboy. The blade is about a foot long. It can cut pretty aggressively through a branch 3 to 4 inches in diameter, no problem. But I was looking to see if anybody had tried the bigger version, which is called the Silky Bigboy. And nobody had used the Bigboy, but I have.
CAIRA: Who is naming these??
CHRISTINE: I’m sorry, Harry, but these names!
HARRY: So I didn’t have any takers on the Bigboy. But one of our writers, Tim Heffernan, had used the Silky Zubat, which is a fixed-blade version of it, to clear a bunch of pretty large branches in Virginia. And this is more storm cleanup. These were about 6-inch-diameter maple branches and some ash, pretty tough hardwoods. If you watch a lot of survivalist YouTube videos, like I might, you see over and over a lot of these folks that are out building rustic cabins in the woods using no power tools. They’re busting out a Silky Zubat or a Bigboy. And you can just make pretty short work of some kind of amazingly thick branches. You wouldn’t really think a handsaw could do it, but they’re fantastic tools. They cut on the pull stroke, so it’s not like you’re … like, the old shipbuilding-type saw. It’s just a kind of an elegant blade that just slices right through it.
ROSIE: So to recap, that’s the Pocketboy, the Bigboy, and the Zubat. What about for flooding? Any tools that would be particularly helpful for that?
HARRY: I mean, flooding is difficult, because it doesn’t take much water for it to be such a serious situation that it’s beyond prep. But when you’re trying to get ready for just a small amount of water entering the house, you are often going to want to at least have a mop on hand. To be able to mop up, a wet/dry vac is excellent too. And one thing that is just a versatile thing that comes up so much is just a tarp. Having a tarp is something that you can use to just divert water. It’s so versatile, and yet it’s sometimes inadequate. So it’s kind of hard to describe it in a way that’s like, “Oh, you simply put a tarp up, and all your problems are solved.” It’s, like, you can cover stuff with it, but also you can drag stuff on it. So it’s just this sort of multipurpose thing. I don’t want to mislead people and say, like, you know, “You just, like, string up a tarp, and everything’s going to be okay.” But it is one of those things that you just need to have, because it just can come into play in so many different sorts of minor, little, like, supplemental ways. But, you know, to get back to Caira’s question, I mean, at the basic level, you’ve got them up. You know, at the next step up, you’ve got a wet/dry vac. At the sort of third level, if you have a chronic flooding situation, you’re going to have a pump installed in your flood-prone area. And you’re going to pump the water out as much as you can, and then you’re going to go back with your wet/dry vac, get what’s left, and then you’re going to mop up after that. And it’s … I mean, it’s a serious, serious situation. I have, like, trepidation about talking about flooding, because it’s just, like, you can get an inch of water in your house and have to redo your baseboards, your drywall, your flooring. You can be in a situation where you can’t sell your house over an inch of water. You can be in a situation where you can’t insure your house anymore, over an inch of water, and all you need to do is just, like, live near a creek. You know, it’s not like … it’s not like you’re clearly “We’re, like, right on the ocean, like, you know, 2 inches from the shore.” Like, you know, your first and primary step is going to be mitigating the risk by changing your yard and changing your rain situation, like, you know, making sure your gutters are working properly, making sure you have, like, extenders on downspouts to just pull the water as far away from your place as possible. And take every step you can so that when a flash flood starts to happen and water just starts to kind of, like, you know, build up in the area, that it at least has somewhere to go before it starts going into your house. I really … like, I have this image in my mind of my cousin. I’m talking about that inch-of-water thing, because that’s, like, a real example from my cousin who lived in Asheville. He was telling me about this flood event they had, and they really had a very hard time. They were trying to sell their house. They had a very hard time afterward because of this. And he was telling me about it. He was like, “We were standing there at the door, and we were bailing it out, bailing it out, bailing. A certain point, we just looked at each other and just stopped, because there was just no stopping it.” And they just had to kind of just stand there and just sort of let it play out and just watch this water just, like, flow into their house, just like, you know, like a $130,000 house. I mean, this is kind of all they had.
CHRISTINE: And we do have some coverage on the site, like, a couple pieces on how to prepare for a potential flood and what to do afterwards, like, kind of the steps you might want to take for cleaning out a basement, right?
HARRY: Yeah, we do. We have a piece on how to clean out a flooded basement, presuming it’s clean-out-able. And then we have one that’s very personal. That’s called “How I Flood-Proofed My House.” And the ideas there are universally applicable when you read it a certain way, but they’re so specific to that one property that it just really had to be just about this one person.
ROSIE: You talked about watching a lot of survivalist videos on YouTube. I wondered, do you experience any kind of burnout, like, putting yourself in the mindset of people who are dealing with disasters or emergency situations? Because you cover so many products, so many scenarios, you’re thinking about so many different eventualities, I wonder, and you live in LA. Do you get fatigued? Are you sort of hyper-anxious?
HARRY: I think I try to be realistic about how much of this people can tolerate, because it’s a difficult thing to contemplate, and it’s also super expensive to try to get yourself prepared all at once. So I try to look at it, like, what is realistic, like, a routine that you could get into? Don’t try to think of this all in one fell swoop, but think of it in terms of these categories, like we’re talking about today. Think of your food and water needs. Think of your communication needs. Think of the tools you might need. Think of how you’re going to get power. And take it step by step, and try to just apply all the generic advice to your own situation. And find a way to just make it affordable for you and something that you can feel that you can rely on. And I wouldn’t say that I feel burnout, but I just … I try to just stay realistic about a topic that is something that we can all prepare for and we can take seriously. Just with the understanding that a lot of these threats are so far beyond consumer products that the advice that we give is, you know, not going to be sufficient all the time, but that the headline-making things about people losing their homes are really just a part of any disaster. And for any of the people who are being severely affected, there are probably a hundred thousand more that are simply deeply inconvenienced for some amount of time. And a lot of the objective of what we’re trying to do is just help people deal with that.
CAIRA: On a lighter note, Harry, before we wrap, we ask all of our guests one final question: So what was the last thing that you bought recently that you really love?
HARRY: Oh, man, I already blew my whole spiel on the Silkys.
ROSIE: Well, what is a thing you bought recently?
HARRY: I have recently become the proud owner of about 144 chlorine dioxide water-purification tablets.
ROSIE: Well, congratulations.
CAIRA: Very on-brand.
HARRY: At least for the next few years, until they expire.
CHRISTINE: Are they just there for an emergency?
HARRY: They’re for an emergency. I bought them more immediately because my kids were aghast at the shape of the water in our water rower, the exercise machine, which has taken on a little bit of sunlight and had developed a nice culture of algae within. And they said, “Dad, clean your gross rower.” And I said, “I need to buy those water-purification tablets anyway. What a perfect time.”
ROSIE: I’ve never heard of someone taking such good care of the water inside their rower.
HARRY: It was gross.
ROSIE: Harry, thanks so much for joining us. This was really, really helpful.
HARRY: Thank you.
CHRISTINE: All right, you guys. Do you feel prepared? Do you feel like you know what you need to get? I’m ready. You’re ready.
CAIRA: I know what I need to get. I am not prepared.
CHRISTINE: Or not prepared. Okay, Rosie, can you salvage anything from this kit you bought?
ROSIE: I definitely can. There’s some first-aid stuff, particularly, that I think will be really useful. However, I have to look at expiration dates.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I think the big takeaway here is that if you’re feeling a little intimidated about building an emergency-supply kit, you can really kind of simplify this by thinking about this, like, filling five categories, right? So that’s food and water. Yep. You got first aid, right, Rosie? You’re covered. Right.
CAIRA: Light, which is my fave, because I’m a Leo.
CHRISTINE: You’re going to want some power and have your communication plan, like a weather radio. And then we’ve got to have the tools, right? The tools are important. Gotta have tools. Yeah.
CAIRA: That’s folding saws.
CHRISTINE: The names of those folding saws are a little intense, but —
CAIRA: Will not be repeated here. But maybe have one.
ROSIE: You can find more about Wirecutter’s coverage and the products we recommended today at our website or in the show notes. Plus, we’ll drop a link to that new emergency-preparedness tool. Check it out.
And that’s it for us. All right, until next week.
Credits
The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel.
Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman.
Episodes are mixed by Catherine Anderson, Efim Shapiro, Rowan Niemisto, Sophia Lanman, and Sonia Herrero.
Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong.
Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager is Cliff Levy.
Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief.
Hosted by Rosie Guerin, Caira Blackwell, and Christine Cyr Clisset.
