Ep 049 - Are Your Ready for a Disaster? What Every Homeowner Needs to Know

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts. With the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now here's your hosts, John and Beth.

Hi, I'm Beth Dodson. Are you prepared for any disaster situation? Well, boy, do I have a guest for you. His name is Patrick Hardy. Patrick is ready for some adventure in business disaster preparedness. He is not your typical expert. No doom and gloom, no scare tactics, which is what I love. Instead, we're going to talk about actionable steps on how you can get prepared about anything that may come your way. Hi, Patrick. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me today. I'm excited for this conversation.

Oh my gosh, so am I. I'm like, somehow we did not realize that we actually live not far from each other in the Sacramento area, which is Fascinating. And, uh, we wanted to talk about all these things— preparedness. One of the biggest things that I had a question on is something as simple as what kind of disasters do you typically see? Because I know you're running all over the world seeing disasters. What kind do you typically see that people are experiencing when it comes to their homes?

Well, the one that is the most common by far, I mean, there's not even— it's not even close, is obviously structure fires. So fires that are accidentally set, usually. I don't see a whole lot of arson fires, but you do see homes that are essentially, uh, they're— they catch on fire because somebody, you know, they leave the grease on, on a stove, or they decide to do something like—

Really?

This actually happens in hurricanes very commonly. Where people will actually use heaters and things, and they'll use a lot of electrical appliances, they'll plug them all into walls, and then they inevitably cause electrical fires. So those are— that fire is by far the most common thing. And that's actually the most common as well in commercial buildings that I've seen no matter where I go.

Now, okay, so I did not realize some of the things that you were saying about hurricanes and electrical fires where people are plugging things in. So If, if people are experiencing fires, what types of tips would you recommend that they could do to actually, I guess, mitigate the fires and also get out of the property if it should be catching on fire?

Well, one thing that is very easy is that to do basic fire suppression, you should always have a fire extinguisher. That makes sense. But there are also things outdoors, like you can use fire blankets. Fire blankets are excellent, particularly in the South. Where you and I were just talking before we came on air today, that I lived in Baton Rouge for many, many years. And one of the things about the South is they know how to eat. They definitely know how to eat. And they know how to cook. And when in a lot of Southern cooking, I don't think this is any myth. I don't think I'm breaking any surprises here when I say Southern cooking involves a lot of oil and a lot of grease.

Totally.

So one of the things that, that, that was in the South that I never saw this in California. And actually I ran into a, I ran into a guy in the airport. His name is Alton Brown. And for those of you who don't know, Alton Brown is very famous because he, he is the host of Iron Chef. And he, and he used to have a TV show, which, which I guess ended up wrapping up on the Food Network. He's a, he's a well-known food personality. Yeah. And when I was— before I moved to Baton Rouge, I didn't— I was watching one of his programs and he was talking about how you can deep fry a turkey. So he was doing like a Thanksgiving special and he talked about how to deep fry a turkey. And he said one of the things that people do is they'll put a stock pot. Okay. So have a massive stock pot on their stove and this happens. People will take their turkey and they will dunk it into this, this boiling hot oil. And all of a sudden they're surprised when this oil starts spitting everywhere, right?

Correct.

There's just oil everywhere and it causes massive fires. So one of the things he said was, and I saw the demonstration of this, he was saying you need to set up a rig and do it. And actually, if you're going to deep fry a turkey, he was showing— I don't know how many people would actually do this. I've never seen this before. Is he showed to do a rig outdoors, like in your front lawn, of like how to slowly— it was like a crank system.

Totally.

Slowly like lower the turkey into it. And that is how you would— and that's, and that's how you actually— is the safest way to deep fry a turkey if you're cooking it for either Thanksgiving or, you know, whatever. I found that so interesting. But when I lived in the South, I realized that people do that all the time. And so one of the things that we say to mitigate and prepare for fires is that you need to do a lot of preparedness, is ensuring, is what I'm doing safe? Just asking that basic question. And as a risk preparedness expert, one of the things I did when I was a consultant for many years was that I'd see people doing things and I would say, hold on a second, wait, wait, wait. You tell me objectively, Do you think that what we are doing is the safest way of conducting this activity? And I can't tell you the number of times where where people would say, "Oh no way!" And I'd be like, "Then why are you doing it? What are you doing it for then?" He tries to get it done objectively.

Right.

I go, you know, step back, think about what you're doing. And I think that if a lot more people did that, if they really sat back a moment and said, "Is it smart?" to take a completely frozen turkey and then dunk it into a boiling— into a stockpot that has boiling oil in it? I mean, is that really the smartest thing to do? And it's just amazing to me that a lot of people just don't take those basic steps. And fire is one of the most common disasters you can absolutely avoid. Not every disaster can be avoided. That one can be.

Yeah, we even tell people, from our perspective, just regularly clean your fume hood and everything above your stove and around your stove because you just never know where excess grease has built up and can cause a fire. So fire definitely is one of those issues. And so you're recommending fire blankets, fire extinguishers, and make objective decisions whether or not this is a good idea to perform this task and the way in which you're doing it.

Yeah. So essentially you're setting up like, you know, you're almost setting up like administrative and managerial controls, right? So you're saying, okay, we're going to— there's certain things we're going to do. There's certain equipment we're going to have nearby. And again, you don't need to overprepare. You don't have a bunch of fire extinguishers. Like sometimes I see that, I'll see that, you know, in the recommendations, please have 4 or 5 fire extinguishers. No one's going to do that.

Let's be real.

Yeah. But not only having the fire extinguisher around, Making sure you have the right type of fire extinguisher as well.

Yes.

Not every fire extinguisher works for every situation. I've been in buildings before doing disaster preparedness surveys or audits. I did that very early in my career. And I would look at fire extinguishers and I, you know, and it has a series of letters. So for those of you who've ever seen a fire extinguisher before, if you haven't, when you go across the next one, you'll see a series of letters, A, B, C, D, K. And on those, it'll tell you the specific kinds of fires that that fire extinguisher is set to suppress. Because if you use the wrong one, it isn't simply like, oh, well, it'll work on every one. They will not. There are certain fire extinguishers that will not work on electrical fires. They just won't because there's certain kinds of chemicals and sometimes they will react with it and sometimes it isn't.

Yes.

So just, you know, making sure that you have that basic preparedness and ensuring you're getting the right kind. of equipment. That is so important in preventing fires.

That's a good— that's a good statement that you made about the fire extinguishers. So can some— and specifically, like, let's say an electrical fire or something— can some of these fire extinguishers actually cause more damage, cause more flames to produce?

Well, if you're using the wrong ones, it absolutely can. And I'm not an expert in every type of fire extinguisher situation. But what I will say When I was a hazmat expert, uh, when I was a hazmat guy, I was a hazmat responder. When I used to go out and deal with chemical fires, those were fires that, that traditional fire extinguishers don't work well with. And sometimes I've seen it before where there were chemical fires and employees, well-meaning, uh, would try to suppress those fires using fire extinguishers.

Sure.

And literally, I can't say the number of times I would show up To fixed facilities, buildings where there was a chemical fire and somebody had tried to suppress it with a traditional fire extinguisher. And they literally just left. They just dropped the fire extinguisher where it laid because when they had tried to suppress the fire, the fire extinguisher, actually the chemicals in the fire extinguisher actually spread the fire out. And so that happened a number of different times. I was actually at a scene one time where I was suiting up. to actually go into a hazmat scene, and literally you could hear there was like an explosion. And it was an explosion because it was actually the fire extinguisher that had exploded. Because chemical fires— I don't think people realize, uh, chemical fires can go up to 5,000 degrees. I mean, like, I've been in magnesium fires and things where literally you can't even use water on these fires because if you water on them, it is so hot it will actually split the water into oxygen and hydrogen atoms at the moment it strikes the fire. And that actually becomes combustible. Therefore, you've now made the fire worse.

Oh my gosh, never thought I'd get a science education on this show. And I'm so excited for it. But yes, that is so crazy. So, okay, so let's say someone is in a house, and they don't have the right equipment, or they've tried everything. Now's the time they have to get out. They have to call 911, and they have to get out of the house. What are your recommendations for people who need to leave their house, whether it's a simple home fire that started because of unpreparedness, or whether it's, um, you know, because we both live in the area where we see a lot of wildfires, or whether it's something like a wildfire? What are the steps that people need to take to exit their home to make sure that they safely reside and get away from the fire?

Well, one of the first things I say is you should always have a disaster backpack with you. And that disaster backpack— and that's sort of the heart of my philosophy— I believe that the center of all disaster preparedness for people is not a disaster plan. I believe that that philosophy is wrong. And I believe that the best way of doing it, because I've been doing it for 20-plus years, is a backpack, making the backpack the center of your preparedness. But how do you do that? Because Simply buying some red backpack at a big box store, you know, that you happen to see on the shelves, that's not going to cut it. That's not going to cut it. So there's a method. We don't have time today to get into it too much, but I have a method. I call it the 5 Pocket Method. It is a method that I utilize no matter whether it's a homeowner, a business, at a university, at, you know, anywhere. I always say to them, always have enough on your person to get to the next place where you can get more resources. So Absolutely. And the backpack is one of the surest ways of ensuring that you're in a better position because it's, it's great because if you have a backpack, all of a sudden you have instant resources for yourself. You have masks, you have goggles. I actually work with people in New York City who work in buildings that are 30, 40, 50 stories high. And when they're on the top, I tell them, I said, what's going to be in your disaster backpack? Do you have to carry everything from your home? No. Because your disaster backpack at home will have different things, but your disaster backpack at work needs to be very specific to the fact that you work in a skyscraper. Do you have to have shoes in there?

Point taken. Yep.

Do you have to have masks in there?

Yep.

Do you have to have goggles in there?

Yep.

Because if there's a fire, and this has happened many, many times, this happened actually just recently in the Hong Kong fire where, you know, there was an entire apartment complex, there were multiple buildings that caught fire. It was amazing. Some of the photos I saw, I've never seen anything like that in all my years of doing this. And if— and the, the fire escapes got covered in smoke like it would, and so people couldn't see, they were disoriented. And that disorientation is something you have to fight. Now, that's specific for somebody who may even live in an apartment complex where you live higher up.

Condo.

Now, for homeowners, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have those things. It just means you need to be fixed on what's appropriate for you so that— and it's that customization That's what I tell people. Don't just buy some backpack. Buy one and then you customize it. And the philosophy for those of you who are listening to this and are thinking, well, how do I start? Here's my answer to you. Start with an empty backpack. Totally empty backpack. And I actually have, Beth, actually I have in my— on my YouTube channel, I actually have a 30-day challenge. It's free.

Ooh.

It's 30 videos for 30 days. It starts you at an empty backpack, and by the 30th day you will have a totally filled backpack. I tell you exactly what to put in there day by day by day. And I have little things like, here's how to train. And then I give them people little drills and stuff to do. Like, for example, I'll say, you know, get a bunch of flashlights, and then I'll have a drill on Sunday, and it'll say, hey, listen, do everything in the dark for 3 hours. Stuff like that.

That's fun, yes.

Just try the equipment out.

Yeah, right.

Because I'm trying to encourage people to do it. And the videos are really short. They're 3 to 5 minutes, but they at least kind of give you the kinds of things that you need to have. And those are the things what I emphasize in those videos. That is what you need to have in a disaster response, whether it's a fire, flood, hurricane, volcanic eruption, alien invasion, doesn't matter.

I love that one, the alien invasion. No. So we will make sure we post this YouTube channel in our show notes because I think this is important, especially because Patrick is telling you, you need to be very specific as to what works for you. So it's very unique. We can give you generalizations, but it's very unique. And then you will walk through this challenge with Patrick for 30 days and test things in the dark. I think I'm gonna do this too because this is hilarious, because another thing that happens a lot in our area is the power goes out. And you need to make sure you know how to operate your home when the power goes out. And so, that's one of the areas where we're also very prepared in our home is I've got little lanterns and flashlights in various locations only because I'm like, ugh, here we go again. The power's gone out.

Yeah. And what I say to folks, because sometimes I hear periodically, well, I have a generator at home. And I say, well, first of all, generators can run out. 2, generators are machines and sometimes they break down.

Right.

3, where we live, there are wildfires and generators can blow out very easily. So when— and when the power grid is out, it can be very difficult to resupply those things. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. We can't get into every single type today. But the main thing I tell folks is, is I say, listen, no matter what gizmo you have, don't care whether it's some, you know, cell phone AI tool or whether it's a generator, some, some great generator you a lot of money for. In the end, this is the philosophy I want you to take from it. You buy it, you try it, but don't rely on it.

Great.

You buy it, you try it, but don't rely on it. So, and why do I say that? I say that because should you rely on it? Sure. It just— what I want you to do is don't rely on it as your only way of getting power. The only way of being able to see in your home. That's why I say to folks, generator's great, but then you should also have your flashlights. Do you need to test your flashlights out? Yeah. Do you need to actually pull out the flashlights? Yeah. Do you actually turn off the lights in your house and do the dishes and do your household chores in the dark? Yeah, with the flashlights.

Yes.

Because that is the only way that ensures that you are not over-relying on the gizmo. You're not over-relying on that great piece of equipment that you've bought, and it gives you something other people don't have, which is great resilience, because you now have multiple backups for anything that you need.

No, that's fantastic. I 100% agree with that philosophy because you just never know. It's almost like a fail-safe situation, one by one by one. The more— I don't want to tell people to go out there and buy everything under the sun to make sure they're prepared, but the more backups you have to anything, it's like a computer backup. You just back up the stuff on your computer and you can do it either in the cloud or you can do it on a hard drive. Whatever the case may be, it's the same concept is make sure you have backup plans so that you can manage, so you can manage your life while you've got things that are happening. Meaning?

Well, one of the things in the 5 Pocket Method, one of the 5 pockets is papers. And so, when I talk about papers to people, I talk about electronic papers and physical papers as well. So, a lot of things that people forget is, yes, I have, you know, yes, I have all these family documents or whatever. I go, are these things backed up? Are they in the cloud? Do you have a thumb drive? Because the cloud is not enough. If you have a massive cyberattack, That backup is now gone.

Correct.

So do you have them on a thumb drive? It doesn't mean that you have to have a thumb drive with, you know, 5 terabytes of memory. I mean, just get one that has, you know, a few gig, 5 gig or 4 gig or whatever. Throw all your papers on there. Now, yes, take that thumbnail, take that thumb drive and throw it in your backpack. That's one of the things I say in the 30 days. Take that thumb drive and throw it in the backpack because it even— because if you're in California and you have to leave the state, we have a massive earthquake and you have family, you have relatives who are in, I don't know, Nevada or Georgia or Louisiana or whatever. When you drive there, you don't have to worry about trying to get in the cloud and stuff. The cloud's nice and that's great, but let's say you can't for some reason. Guess what? You always have that stuff immediately accessible because what if you have to use someone else's computer? You see what I mean?

Correct.

So I just tell people, diversify constantly. Force yourself to, to, to think, if this isn't available, what backups do I have? I actually do this all the time. I actually have Expired driver's licenses in all my disaster backpacks. I have a work one, I have a travel one, I have one that I keep in my home, obviously. And same with my old passports. I do a lot of international travel. So whenever I finish, I always have an extra passport and then it's all over the place. So if anything ever happens, there always is the extra one there.

Sure.

And that always ensures that no matter what happens, I always have a way to identify myself, which is so important because people just say, well, I just throw the old driver's license out. I go, why do you do that? Just save it.

That's a smart idea. You can use it.

It's valid as ID. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So it's still a valid ID that's been expired.

It is. And once it has expired, it's still a way because you need to be able to access information. I mean, even when you're dealing with like insurance adjusters, a lot of people don't realize this. It sounds like you work a lot in the insurance industry, that when you work with insurance adjusters, They expect you to have ID. You have to have ID on you because what happened in the Palisades and Eaton fires were people pretended to be the homeowners, said, well, my ID is gone, can I just go inside and grab some stuff? And those people were actually looters. They would actually go in there. When I went in there, I actually have a video coming up. I actually have a— I developed an entire— I built an entire US Fire Service qualified wildfire shelter. And I made it entirely out of school supplies. I built everything. So I used poster board, I used binders, I used pencils, I used yardsticks, I used tape that you'd find in like any classroom in America. And I did that because I said, what would happen if you couldn't get into your home? What would happen? Do you have a way to shelter yourself after the fire? This is an easy shelter for you to actually build. And to get back to what I was saying in that video, I actually— when I went to the Palisades fire, there's actually footage in there of when I had a number of clients who said, I'd like you to come in and help us recover the complex. I'd say, sounds good. And we had to go through military checkpoints, and that's the only way they would allow us through. And there were special cards they had to have to let them through. And so because they were so worried about looters, because they would actually walk up—

Yeah.

People who were dressed very nicely in nice cars would say, Hey, listen, I need to get to my home up there. You're not going to stop me, right? And they'd say, oh, no, no, go on up there. And they would go up there and they would steal all their valuables. So that's why it's so important to have ID. People, I think, forget about that. Your cell phone is not sufficient. You must have physical ID, especially these days with AI.

Yeah, no, that's a good idea. And I still have all my driver's license and passports, so I am going to put them in my go bags. Wait, so you bring up The Palisades Fire. And I have 2 questions related to this. The first one is, when people are in situations, whether it's hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, etc., a lot of times they have to leave their home to get to safety. Tell us a little bit about what you recommend on when and how to leave your home, because the roads can get crazy. The roads can get backed up. It becomes, um, very emotionally triggered and charged for a lot of people because fear is setting in. So do you have recommendations on what people need to do, not only just to take a go bag, but to go into their, their cars and leave? And what are the best methods to know which routes to take?

You should have what I call the 1-10-100 rule. So you should have a place to go within 1 mile of your home. You should have a place to go within 10 miles of your home. And you should have a place to go within 100 miles of your home. Because in each one of those locations, there's a different kind of disaster. So let's say you just have a house fire, okay, your home is affected, maybe another house is basically affected.

Sure.

But it's just essentially, I mean, it's not like the entire community is engulfed in a conflagration. So you have a place to go within 1 mile. And that— you see how that immediately deflates the emotion of it? You don't even have to leave your home, but you don't have to be at your house either. Because I will tell you, uh, one of the saddest things I ever saw is when I came back to Palisades Inn fire, and there are people who were clearly emotionally distraught. They'd lost everything.

Yeah.

And I, and I really hate to say this to a lot of folks, which is a lot of that stuff, unfortunately, they probably lost it for good. and they're not going to get compensated for it. People were underinsured. People were relying on other people to provide things. And there's one homeowner who I thought was incredibly sad. She basically lost everything and she's just going to have to sell the lot. I mean, she— the insurance coverage she had was not going to cover what happened. That kind of stuff is incredibly sad. So you don't want to be right there. Then you should have something within 10 miles. So not like within 2. You want to go, you know, Between 5 and 10.

Okay.

And in that 10 miles, you want to have a place that you can go in case there is a disaster in your city. So something occurs, right? You have a hazmat spill, you have something like that. And a lot of times an alternate evacuation location is, weirdly enough, your workplace. I actually have slept a number of nights in my own office. When I was in Washington, D.C., President Obama asked me to sit as the national private sector representative to FEMA for 3 months. And I did that, ended up extending it to 5 months. And when I was in DC, we had a disaster called a derecho. Those of you who may not know what a derecho is, a derecho is essentially an unexpected windstorm. So what'll happen— and it was one of the most eerie things I've ever been through before— the wind will be going at, you know, 2, 3 miles per hour, and all of a sudden, with no warning, the wind will get up to 125 miles an hour, just like that. And the wind will be blowing everywhere. And, and it's just a crazy windstorm and you'll get hail. It's insane. So what happened was I ended up sleeping a number of nights in FEMA's headquarters. I never thought I would ever do that my whole life. There was actually a couch on like one of the floors and I slept there for 3 or 4 nights because I couldn't go back.

Right.

Because I obviously— I was— for those of you who are on the East Coast, I lived in a place called Shady Grove, Maryland, which is if you take the Red Line out of Washington, D.C. It is the very last stop. It is the very last stop. And so that's about 10 miles away. So I was able to stay there. Everything was fine. And I was able— and they had a refrigerator there and they had a place for me to make a little bit of food. They had a microwave and stuff. I mean, you're not gonna make gourmet food. And then you should have a place that's 100 miles away. So we're talking about things like the Northridge earthquake. I was actually in the Northridge earthquake when I was a little boy. And that was a massive conflagration. You can't— you couldn't live in LA because there's no— there was nowhere to go. Yeah. I mean, so literally my parents took us, took myself and my little brother. We went somewhere. We went to a relative's home. They lived about 110, 115 miles away. And that was right because now you get to stay away from the community a little bit because because frankly, I think people feel like it's going to happen rapidly. The insurance people are going to immediately come out because they watch all the commercials, and that's not going to happen. That is just not realistic. I've been in disaster for 20 years. I've yet to see insurance adjusters. Who just show up the day of and say, no problem, it's all handled. That never occurs because frankly, there are not enough adjusters at all.

Yes, right.

So I say find a place that's a good distance away and try to find a relative's house or a friend's house or a colleague's house, somebody who you really trust and are personal with, because then you can stay there for a few days, right? It's comfortable. You can eat a real meal. You have real people to talk to. It's gonna be a lot of psychological distressed, and you have a physical place where you get air conditioning and you have a place to just relax. So this is also particularly for places— people who deal with hurricanes. If you live in hurricane zone, you should have somewhere about 100 miles away in any direction. Actually, there's some places I even say if you live in Florida, you should probably extend it to about 500 miles. So somewhere way out of Florida.

Okay.

If you have to.

So yeah, that's great. So one of the things you touched on, and we're hearing from some of our customers in the Palisades fires, People who left and lost things, and people who actually stayed and lost communication, so they didn't know whether to leave or not. And I think they missed their opportunity. There's a psychological impact when it comes to some sort of disaster that happens to people's homes. One of the things that you brought up was leaving just a mile to ten miles away, or even a hundred miles away, can also kind of slow down that. psychological stressor. Are there other tips that you offer that helps people with that? Because it is really psychologically devastating to a lot of people, especially like in Pacific Palisades, we're hearing people were in their homes for 40 years, and they lost everything. And they're really stressed out.

I was talking to a high school, they asked me to keynote there. And I went, I, they had a big assembly. And so it was this It was this big parochial school on the East Coast. And so I was in front of all these kids. And so one of the things the kids asked me was they said, you know, what should be in our go bag? What should be in our disaster backpack? As if high school kids really care what belongs in their disaster backpacks. And I turned to them and I paused and I said, a Nintendo Switch. You should always have a Nintendo Switch in your disaster backpacks. And the kids thought I was crazy. And I said, it doesn't have to be a Nintendo Switch, but it has to be something Like a Nintendo Switch, one of the one of the other pockets in my five pocket method is the psychological pocket. And again, if you all go on my YouTube channel and you go on the thirty day videos, you will see I talk about psychological, and I have two or three videos on the psychological portion alone. What I say to folks is you should have something in your backpack, anything that can immediately take you away. From the moment. So when I used to be an EMT, I used to work on an ambulance. I saw a lot of things I probably shouldn't have seen at the age that I was at. I didn't have the emotional maturity to deal with a lot of things I was seeing.

Mm-hmm.

And I literally used to have a photo of a tropical island. I don't even know how I got the photo. It's been so long. It wasn't a postcard. It was actually a photograph. And again, I don't know how I got it. And I used to put it under the visor. And whenever I'd have a tough call or just needed a moment away, I'd flip the visor down and there was a photo of the tropical island. And it just immediately just gave me just a minute to say, I'm just going to take a 5-second vacation, just get out of this. But for other folks, you've got to also have some, something that, that takes you out of things for a significant amount of time. So more than say like an hour or 2. So that, that's why I say for kids, Should they have a toy or 2 in their backpacks? Yeah. Should a teenager have something that's age-appropriate for them? Yes. And the Nintendo Switch is the metaphor for that.

Sure.

Right? So something that will distract them, a Lego kit, anything that can get them away. And for adults, I actually say this, and this really applies to anybody as well, which is for a long term, if you think you're going to be gone for a long time, here's what I want you to do. I want you to find something, and I'm very specific about this. Find something that gives you the smell that helps you to relax. So I was in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. I was doing a video that I did when I invented a disaster currency. That video will be coming out in July. And one of the things that I did was I was at a place where they actually had incense. So literally, I say to folks, let's say you have to be in someone else's home, or you have to be in a hotel, or you have to be somewhere for an extended period of time. Here's what I want you to do. Have something that is a scent, because scent is the close— is the scent that's closest, most closely tied to memory, right? And get something that makes you feel good.

Mm-hmm.

Just get a scent that makes you feel good. So when you're closing your eyes at night and you're sleeping, You don't know where you're at. Your body doesn't know where you're at. But as soon as that smell happens, immediately it helps you to relax because you need to sleep. I tell it to disaster survivors all the time. You need to sleep. I don't care what else you say. You need to sleep. So getting that kind of emotionality out of you, getting something positive that comes from the sense of smell. And if, as I said, if you end up watching the video, you will see how I talk about that, how you need to develop that and what you need to pick. Because that sense of smell, a really nice scent, can take you away from everything you're dealing with.

Oh my gosh, I think that's beautiful. I never even thought to put scent, but you are so correct. It's the number one thing that's tied to memory, and it can change everything. Oh, that's so amazing. It's like honeysuckle reminds me of being a kid on my grandfather's farm. Love it. So I— this conversation has been so amazing, and I want to end on this positive note because it's been so great. We are going to link to people your 30-day challenge in the show notes, but I also want to talk about how else they can find you.

Yes, thank you very much. I've enjoyed speaking with you today. My website is disasterpatrick.com. Again, disaster, normal spelling, Patrick, normal spelling, .com. And there you will find links to my social pages. So One of the things that we're doing is that, um, is that on my YouTube channel— I've become a YouTuber, I can't believe it—

Yay!

But every single month I am taking on an extremely difficult disaster problem, a problem that people have never been able to solve, and I'm gonna solve it. And so one of the things I've done, we have a few coming out. For example, I developed a method for evacuating 240 cats in 90 minutes. I, I determined to, and I— we actually did it. Actually, it's near you in El Dorado Hills.

You were literally herding cats.

We were herding cats, and I got the entire team and we evacuated them all off-site. I, I broke a world record. I did CPR for 28 hours, 45 minutes nonstop. Um, as I mentioned, I built a wildfire shelter, and this September, folks, I hope that you subscribe to my channel. We're doing something incredible, never been done before. I am building the world's first FEMA-rated hurricane shelter made entirely out of the little Lego bricks, and we're going to be testing them at the University of Maryland's famous Glenn Wind Tunnel, and it's going to blow at 200 miles per hour. And yes, I will be in the shelter when they do it. So it's going to be an absolutely amazing thing. Oh my gosh. And I'll be touring around the country afterwards to show— just, you know, showing off the shelter, demonstrating to people that you can build these things. You don't have to have an engineering degree. There are things we can do, things around us, school supplies, things like that, that really unlock our ability to have the independence. And if there's one thing I've gotten from your questions and some of the things you've been talking to me about is that people need to feel as though they can do it. And I'm here to tell you, you can.

Yeah.

And I'm an expert in doing this a long time. I'm telling you, you can do it. Let me show you how. And with these amazing challenges, it's just, it's so much fun. I get to take people on these incredible journeys to discover that truly, If you prepare for a disaster, you will never experience one.

Oh, I love it! I mean, more empowerment to everyone out there. I am so excited and so grateful that you were here, Patrick. This has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for all your tips. I cannot wait to see all the great things you're doing and subscribe to your channel because I want to see this wind tunnel video. And for those of you who are with us. Please subscribe to this as well. Share it with anybody you think needs any of these tips. You know, every one of us has probably been in some particular situation where we may or may not have had a disaster affect us, but it may be forthcoming as well. So just be prepared, and we hope these tips help you. And by all means, sign up for Patrick's 30-day challenge. You're going to want to get that, that go bag all organized just for you. So thank you. And thank you for being here for Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast. Have a wonderful day.

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