Procrastination is not readiness

Some time ago, an interesting question was asked on "A Republic, if you can keep it" , concerning personal disaster readiness that evoked me to pledge to look further into local preparations here in Jefferson County, Alabama. And of course, I have procrastinated. I still have only skimmed over the online materials, but they seem to refer to plans that are not readily available for public review, but I may have overlooked them. If something were to happen, now... I have;

• enough gas in my car to get to what I still consider my hometown
• enough food for a week, though it hardly seems appetizing now
• water may be problematic here, though I should have the ability of purifying some amount due to a small mioxx device
  and once I get to my hometown I'd probably be weathering whatever storm with a filter plant operator of some 30 yrs
  
• an amount of old ammunition that should be shot for practice and replaced
  

The unorganized thoughts that I had referred to on Mr Shantz blog are still unorganized but involve leadership. Many readily available resources seem to have been been mismanaged during Katrina. Most grossly mismanaged were the inhabitants of New Orleans. I believe that, whatever conditioning we may have from our lifestyles, people will act to help themselves and others during emergencies. I'm sure that Jabbar Gibson's ride to dry land is not the only act of natural evolving leadership that occurred, but is the only one I can now recall. We in America are conditioned to rely too much on professional services. While it is useful in the cities and towns we live in to often defer to those with superior education and training for a given task, it is irresponsible to assume that those services will always be available. And when the authorities we elect are derelict for whatever reasons we must recognize and act upon a default authority to act most responsibly with the resources that are in our possession. I feel this includes an unused public bus. This sounds like theft, but as long as I am personally prepared to take responsibility for whatever I take and to make whole an owner who loses property by my action, I would rather act than always wonder about ifs and thens.