AnsomMag.com |

Earthquakes, fire, floods, hurricanes. Disasters and their aftermaths are older than humanity.

Add to this mixture terrorism, nuclear weapons, wars, and it is not an exaggeration to say that disaster might be around the corner or minutes away. The Asian tsunami, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina were given wide media attention and underscored the need for survival skills and preparedness. The Boy Scout motto "Be prepared" applies to everyone.

The pre-assembled emergency preparedness kit is a specialty item that has emerged to meet the needs of an emergency conscious population.

"You could spend weeks or months finding all the products that go into these kits," said Chris Stephens, president of Security Omni Corporation, a Seattle, Washington-based company that assembles emergency kits that retail from $12.95 to $280 depending on their contents.

Food and water are the most basic items, and an Omni survival kit contains water packets and food bars to sustain several people for up to five days, depending on the size of the kit. The food bars are from Mayday and each contains 3200 calories and all essential vitamins and minerals.

Other essential items in kits include ponchos, small tents, Mylar blankets and first aid supplies. Higher end kits have dynamo-powered flashlights and either a solar powered or hand crank-operated radio. Stephens stocks the kits with products from a variety of manufacturers.

His customers include retailers, law enforcement organizations, businesses, and government agencies. He provided numerous kits to rescue workers during Hurricane Katrina, but Stephens notes that larger companies were involved in the Katrina rescue effort.

"It was hard to compete with them," he said.

Stephens notes that his kits are priced so that his retailers can make $100 margin on the $280 kit.

"Safety is a number one concern for most people but few people do anything about it," he said. "Our $280 kit can keep a family of four alive for five to six days. What kind of price can you put on survival?"

Perhaps nowhere else in the country is emergency preparedness more emphasized than in Utah, where schools are required to keep an emergency kit in the classroom for every child.

"We are in a high earthquake environment," said Vicky Berry of General Army and Navy in Salt Lake City. "Its not an if kind of thing but a when kind of thing."