| From RVbookstore.com Your Letters Reader
Dick Kuykendall wrote this in response to RV Travel editor Chuck Woodbury's
question in issue 183 about how fast readers could get on the road with
their RVs in an emergency. Our travel trailer is ready 24/7 for fun or emergencies… once we get to it with our SUV. The SUV also serves as our trailer's tow vehicle. However, our travel trailer is stored in a facility at least five minutes from our home, which is unfortunate in an emergency. So, my wife and I took an important extra precautionary step in developing our evacuation plan. We packed a hard-shell suitcase with the most critical essentials and keep it next to the garage-house door ready to grab as we begin escaping the area in our SUV. Our escape-suitcase is easy to find even in darkness. It’s visibly marked with luminescent and retro-reflective tape and signs just like the US Navy uses on ships to help sailors escape. My wife and I are comforted knowing our bag is properly packed, easy to find and ready for use in our SUV if we're unable to quickly make it to our RV for any reason, such as traffic congestion. I'd like to see a "free" list of stuff RVers typically include in their personalize escape plan. It would be great if we RVers could build this list on a dedicated web site sponsored by the RV Bookstore, for example. Also, it would be interesting to see the items sorted by the frequency they are recommended by the contributors. Every RVer needs to have their emergency-bags packed and have a sound, personalized escape plan, including the most likely, least congested, optional routes to get out of town fast and safe. Local agency transportation engineers and planners can help us with this information. But, we all need some guidance from those we respect and trust; folks like ourselves, the RV owners with experience in such things. There must be hundreds of experts whom also are RV owners like us. They could be the core group of RVers to lead the charge. This would be a fantastic public serve unfulfilled by the self-serving RV industry. And with all the hurricanes this year we have been reminded we can't wait for local/state and federal governments to do it for us. Industry and government agencies at all levels can provide helpful information we can use to build our customized plans. But, as individual RV owners I feel it's our responsibility to take the initiative to develop our own plans and to execute them. If we RV owners wait for someone else to do it for us, well, we just might be the last to leave town, if at all. I say, let’s "get it together, together" as a group of RV owners. We just need a little support from people we trust like the good folks at RV Travel to provide us with a rallying point. As RV owners, our collective brain-power could be a powerful tool to do good things if we just had a better way to do it together. Are you, as a fellow RV owner, interested in helping with this good cause? I hope you'll say, "Yes." If you feel uncomfortable in contributing to the site, would you be interested in reading it? Now, I think I'll go dry-run my plan and time it in "normal" rush hour traffic conditions. If I am surprised by the time it takes to fully get out of harms way with my RV or I'm unable to reach it in time, at a minimum I will feel better knowing I have the most-essential survival items in my tow vehicle. And I'll feel especially good once I reach my safe, final destination knowing I did it on my own without waiting for help from big business and big government. I hope we'll be able to join each other around a safe campsite to talk about our experiences; preferably before an emergency.
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