Who is Dani?
My name is Danielle Johnson. To my friends and family, I’m Dani. I was born and raised in a small town about 25 miles outside of Seattle, Washington. About 3 years ago my husband and I decided to move to Chandler, AZ to be closer to family.
You might have noticed that my blog is titled “The Survival Lady”. That might make you wonder why a notary/ordained minister would have a blog about survival, family planning, and organization. In this post, I will share the event that inspired this blog
The Event
On April 19, 2021, around 5 am our apartment building caught on fire. It burned down in under 5 minutes. Yes, you read that correctly, we lost EVERYTHING in under 5 minutes. When I say we lost everything, I mean everything. We lost a family member. The only things we had were the clothes that we were sleeping in (so no shoes), our bug-out bags, and what we had in our cars.
5 minutes truly is no time at all and we didn’t even have the full 5 minutes. It took just under 5 minutes for the building to burn down. We had maybe 2 minutes to do anything. All I had time to do was call 911. All my husband had time to do was grab our bug-out bags, guns, and ammo bags.
I swear on everything I saw our dog leave the apartment. He was so well trained the only reason we ever used a leash was apartment rules. I knew that I would find him waiting by either my car or my husband’s truck. That is where he would wait every time we would get ready to leave.
The Creation of the Bug-Out-System
About 3 months before the fire I started to get a really bad feeling that something bad was coming. I wasn’t sure what was coming or when it would happen. I started researching “bugging out” and what to do in case of an emergency.
At the time I only had a partial Bug-Out System in place. While that was better than nothing I just keep thinking what if. What if I had a complete Bug-Out-System that morning? If I couldn’t go back in time to re-do that morning then I’ll have to settle for sharing my experiences to help others.
I’ve combined all of my research and experiences into a system that will help families facing an emergency.
Why I Created a Blog
I have noticed PTSD in both my husband and myself to this day. I never realized how bad my husband was dealing with it until one day the toaster set off the smoke alarm and he jumped up and said “We need to grab what we can and go now!” Once I realized how much this was affecting us and that we were not just going to move past it with time alone, I decided to share our story to hopefully help other families not have to go through what we have.
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