It's overwhelming and emotional to see damage done to your own property, particularly when it was supposed to be a safe haven. Instead of giving up on the bug out location, you can turn the site around and ensure it's prepared for another crisis. It's all about making smart decisions and trying to salvage all that you can, either to rebuild or to sell for profit.

Other than damage to your primary residence, perhaps the worst news to get when a natural disaster hits is finding out it clobbered your own private Bug Out camp site.

Last April 30, a strong storm front drove its way in Holmes County, Mississippi right into the town of Durant.  Significant damage resulted including one death of a man in a tornado collapsed house in town.

Days later FEMA assessed the city wide damage and decided not to provide storm recovery funding or epic banner 250×250 evolution of portable water filtration, low interest loans for businesses to rebuild.

Ground Zero

The 600 acre parcel of land that includes our Bug Out camp was hit by this tornado.

None of the four structural cabins were directly hit, but residual wind damage choked the camp area with downed trees and limbs.  The site faces months of heavy clean-up work.

Initial Damage Assessments

Upon entering camp, a big oak tree was pushed over right inside the camp area with the oak root ball leaving a huge hole that was full of water from the rains.  Two other trees downed in the camp blocked the main camp circle drive and even walking was difficult with all the tree trash thrown everywhere.

Two foresters were dispatched for assessments to the timber damage. Most of the big oaks lying on the ground now had trunks twisted by the wind action of the tornado, thus ruining the tree to be used for board timber.

Not enough were damaged to entice a logger to come in for a salvage harvest.

The other issue involved property wide access trails.  Virtually every trail had trees pushed over blocking ATV travel.

Decision-Making Priorities

A prevailing idea now is just to bug out, leave the downed timber alone and to let nature take its course.  This is rather than having the entire forested areas further ruined by a clear cut timber harvest.  First on the list of “To Do” is to clean up the camp site area.

Next is to clear primary ATV trails, again by sawing downed trees to allow easy passage via ATVs.  Trees too big to cut with a chainsaw will have to be moved by a tractor bucket and/or the hiring of a dozer to push the trails clear.  This means money of course.

Has a natural disaster damaged your bug-out location? How were you able to recover?

Article Source: Survival Cache