Greetings from the Lakes District of B.C.. I'm living in the Burns Lake area to be more precise.

In the past I was what you might call a casual prepper. I was over-confident in my ability to handle situations that arose and thought I had done enough to see my way through any oncoming crisis.

October 2006 was my wakeup call. In under 24 hours over a meter of snow fell in the area. When the power went out in some areas, snowplows couldn't refuel so the snow kept accumulating. All the affected stores had to shut their doors because their electronic cash registers wouldn't operate. Some stores that still had power couldn't sell anything since their point-of-sale registers were linked by internet to central databases elsewhere. With no internet, they were helpless. I knew one of the people working at the local 7-11 so my last 'meal' for several days consisted of a submarine sandwich slipped through the door on an IOU. My casual prepping allowed me to get through the next several days but not without significant hardship. No power, telephone, or heat. The road was unplowed so travel was impossible. I was completely isolated and in no way as prepared as I had thought.

Fortunately, the incident lasted only a few days and life slowly returned to 'normal' afterward, but it caused me to seriously think about next time.

August 2010 brought another wakeup call. The Binta Lake forest fire was about 30 kilometers from where I was living and for weeks the air was thick with smoke. The sky was so dark, even at midday, that it reminded me of when I was near Mt. St. Helens in May 1980 while it was erupting. Although I was in a relatively safe area, the questions kept going through my mind ... 'what if ...' If I had to evacuate, what would I take with me? How could I save things that I couldn't take? My prepping from the 2006 snowstorm certainly didn't take an evacuation into account.

I found myself in a recent situation of needing to move from where I had been living, so this was my opportunity to really get things into gear. I purchased a used 24 foot travel trailer which was a balance for me between a comfortable living space and something that I could hitch up and haul away with relative ease if the situation presented itself. Going for a used trailer, I could do it without putting myself in debt.

Although I'm living in it now, I'm going through the walls section by section and reinsulating to make it more suitable for a northern winter. I'm also rewiring to make use of more energy efficient lighting, solar panels, etc. but also comfort items such as free-to-air satellite TV. I've had a ham radio licence for many years so I'll definitely be adding more than my fair share of radio gear.

So that is how I got to where I am now. My apologies if this ended up being a little long-winded.