KETCHUM, Idaho (AP) — A raging fire at a base lodge at Idaho’s famed Sun Valley Resort ski area heavily damaged the building just days after the ski season ended, officials said Thursday.

Flames were shooting 30 feet from the roof of the resort’s Warm Springs Lodge when police arrived at the scene Wednesday night and the fire was still burning Thursday afternoon, officials said.

There were no reports of injuries. The resort held its final day of skiing last Sunday.

No damage estimate was immediately available but it was difficult for firefighters to put out the fire because it got into a space between the building’s ceiling and roof, said Will Fruehling, chief deputy of the Blaine County sheriff’s office.

“I’m not a building expert, but when big portions of the roof are burned or gone or collapsed, I would find it hard to believe that it’s salvageable,” he said.

No employees were inside the building that had been closed for the season and there were no reports of injuries, said Sun Valley Resort spokeswoman Kelli Lusk.

Damage was estimated at more than $1 million, said Neil Bradshaw, the mayor of the town of Ketchum where the resort is located. He said an investigation into the cause will be conducted by the Ketchum Fire Department, Idaho State Fire Marshal Knute Sandahl, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The ski area closed for the season last Sunday with events at the lodge that Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw said brought the community together.

“I’m sure that this sad situation will also bring the community together in a way that we find a solution going forward,” he told reporters near the lodge. “This is important for our town, important for our valley, and we will work toward finding a good solution that works for our community.”

It wasn’t yet known if sprinklers inside the lodge had activated, Bradshaw said.

The lodge made of river stones and logs was built in 1993 and is one of two base lodges at different access points to the slopes of the 9,150-foot (2,789-meter) Bald Mountain.

Bald Mountain and Sun Valley Resort are consistently listed nationally as among the top destinations for skiers, and draws international visitors.

Bald Mountain, typically called Baldy by locals, has also produced some of the nation’s top alpine skiers and snowboarders.

Picabo Street learned to ski at Sun Valley and won a silver medal in the downhill at the 1994 Olympics in Norway and a gold medal in the super G at the 1998 Olympics in Japan.

Snowboarder Kaitlyn Farrington also learned at the resort and won a gold medal in the halfpipe at the 2014 Olympics in Russia.

The Sun Valley region became a seasonal destination for the elite after novelist Ernest Hemingway, who is buried in Ketchum, and other stars started visiting in the late 1930s.

MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, WY – Beginning at 8 a.m. Friday, April 20, 2018, select roads and services in Yellowstone National Park will open for the season. The opening of a five-mile-stretch of road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris may be delayed until it is safe to drive on. Plan accordingly and stay informed.

Open Roads

• West Entrance to Madison
• Madison to Old Faithful
• Madison to Norris
• Norris to Canyon Village
• Norris to Roaring Mountain
• Mammoth Hot Springs to Willow Park
• North Entrance to Mammoth Hot Springs to Northeast Entrance (open year-round)

Open Services

• Visit Operating Hours & Seasons for area-specific services.

Delayed Opening

Due to unsafe driving conditions, the road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris may remain closed until it is safe to drive on. A road construction area, about five miles between Willow Park and Roaring Mountain, is unpaved, deeply rutted, and muddy. Construction crews are working hard to improve the area.

Plan Your Visit

Until the road construction area opens, plan to travel to Old Faithful and Canyon via the West Entrance.

Stay Informed

Find updated road status on the park website, at Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, Canyon Village, and West Yellowstone visitor centers, and by calling (307) 344-2117. To receive Yellowstone road alerts on your mobile phone, text “82190” to 888-777 (an automatic text reply will confirm receipt and provide instructions).

Each spring, Yellowstone National Park clears snow and ice from approximately 320 miles of park roads as well as the Beartooth Highway outside the park’s Northeast Entrance in preparation for the summer season.

Springtime in Yellowstone means fewer crowds, opportunities for hiking at lower elevations, and skiing or snowshoeing at higher elevations. Wildlife viewing highlights this time of year include bison calving, bears recently emerged from dens, bull elk antlers in velvet, and the arrival of migratory birds.

To celebrate National Park Week, entrance fees will be waived on Saturday, April 21, 2018.

The park is pleased to offer a new, alternative method for purchasing digital annual and seven-day entrance passes online at YourPassNow. In addition to the traditional method of paying fees in-person upon arrival, visitors can use a personal device to purchase entrance passes at no additional cost. Once purchased, passes are emailed and can be used immediately, stored on a personal device, or printed for future use.

The Old West is coming back to The Gate City Shooting Range on 2 1/2 Mile Road on Saturday at 10 a.m., and the Vaqueros Cowboy Shooting Club is holding an open house.

The public is invited to come listen to tall tales, shoot the old guns and find yourself back in time. Guns and ammo will be supplied by the Vaqueros Cowboy Shooting Club, an affiliate of the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS).

SASS is an international organization created to preserve and promote the sport of cowboy shooting. SASS promulgates rules and procedures to ensure safety and consistency in cowboy shooting matches, preserving the history of the Old West and seeks to protect the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Cowboy shooting is a multi-faceted sport in which contestants compete with firearms typical of those used in the taming of the Old West. It is a timed sport in which shooters compete with single action pistol, shotgun and rifle in the “Spirit of the Game,” meaning contestants fully participate in what the competition requires. Contestants try their best to dress the part, use appropriate competition guns and respect the traditions of the old West.

Contestants normally have an alias such as Hank Crawford, Klamath Jack, Dave Mather, Shotgun Sally, Luke Short, Cactus Jack, etc.

Safety is the order of the day and cowboy shooting ranges are cold ranges, meaning that all guns are unloaded. The guns are only loaded at the loading table prior to shooting at the targets on the range. Firearms are then taken to the unloading table to eject spent brass and checked to make sure they are unloaded. All rifles and shotguns in racks must have their actions open.

Single action revolvers can only be loaded with five rounds and the hammer must rest on an empty chamber.

The rule of 170 is always in effect while shooting, meaning that the revolver, rifle or shotgun must not break 170 degrees as the shooter shoots on the course. Fanning of single action revolvers in order to shoot targets faster is prohibited. Leaving an unfired round in a holster is counted as a miss. Contestants may not move with a cocked weapon. Penalties will be assessed for dropped weapons. Everyone is a safety officer and may help keep the range safe by instructing others to follow the rules.

This year, a jail has been constructed and added to the Gully Ville Old West bay, so bring your camera and take a picture of family and friends in front of Gully Ville or looking out of the jail.

After the competition is over and everyone who is interested in shooting the firearms used in cowboy shooting is finished, there will be a lunch of hot dogs, chili and drinks for contestants and the public.

The Vaqueros shoot every third Saturday of the month and the set up time is 9 a.m. A safety meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. with shooting stages to follow.

For further information on the cowboy shooting open house, contact Steve McClung at his e-mail: smcclung7521@msn.com or Rick Hillman at 208-406-8501

Smokey Merkley was raised in Idaho and has been hunting since he was 10 years old. He was a member of the faculty of Texas A&M University for 25 years. There he taught orienteering, marksmanship, self-defense, fencing, scuba diving and boxing. He was among the first DPS-certified Texas Concealed Handgun Instructors. He can be contacted at mokeydo41245@hotmail.com.

The body of a deceased person was recovered from a draw north of Providence Canyon Sunday afternoon and taken to the state medical examiner’s office for identification.According to Cache County Sheriff’s Lt. Brian Locke, the body was found on private p…

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Republican Congress members from the Pacific Northwest are upset with a federal judge’s order to spill water from four Snake River dams to help speed migrating salmon to the Pacific Ocean.

They say the water could be saved for other uses and are denouncing the spill, which began April 3, and a push by environmentalists to remove the four dams to increase wild salmon runs.

“Dams and fish can co-exist,” Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Dan Newhouse, whose Washington districts include the dams, said in a joint statement.

The four dams, built in the 1960s and 1970s, provide hydropower, flood control, navigation, irrigation and recreation benefits, supporters say. But the giant dams are also blamed for killing wild salmon, an iconic species in the Northwest.

McMorris Rodgers and Newhouse have introduced a bill that would prevent any changes in dam operations until 2022. The measure was co-sponsored by Republican House members from Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Nevada, along with Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader of Oregon.

It passed the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday and heads to the floor in coming weeks.

“Without Snake and Columbia river dams and the many benefits they provide, life in central Washington as we know it would be unrecognizable,” Newhouse said.

Hydropower is the Northwest’s lifeblood, said Republican Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho.

“For a liberal judge to ignore the broad scientific consensus of the federal government and the states of Idaho, Washington and Montana is unconscionable and must be stopped,” he said.

The increased spill will cost some $40 million in lost power sales, and could hurt transportation and barging on the rivers, flood control and irrigation systems, Republicans contend.

But Democrats argue studies of the dams, including whether they should be removed, must go forward.

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington recently sent a letter to House and Senate leadership saying the river’s management must include salmon recovery.

The letter criticized the bill to prevent changes in dam operations. It was signed by Murray and Democratic Reps. Adam Smith and Pramila Jayapal of Washington.

“The Columbia and Snake River system is essential to the Pacific Northwest’s culture, environment and economy,” the letter said.

The four dams — Ice Harbor, Lower Monumental, Little Goose and Lower Granite — span the Snake River between the Washington cities of Pasco and Pullman. Together they produce about 4 percent of the region’s electricity.

Replacing that power would require the equivalent of two nuclear power plants, Labrador said.

Environmental groups disagree.

A new study contends other renewable sources could replace the dams’ power for a little more than $1 a month for the average Northwest household.

The study “explodes the myth that we can’t have both wild salmon and clean energy,” said Joseph Bogaard, director of the Save Our Wild Salmon Coalition. “We can remove these four deadly dams, restore one of our nation’s great salmon rivers and improve the Northwest’s energy system.”

But supporters of the dams say wind and solar power are too unreliable to replace the lost hydropower.

The Columbia-Snake river system holds more than a dozen imperiled salmon runs, and the federal government has spent more than $15 billion since 1978 on efforts to save the fish.

But those efforts have pushed wild salmon, orca and other fish and wildlife populations closer to extinction, Bogaard said.

Removing the dams is the only way to save the salmon runs, conservation groups say.

“Salmon are in desperate need of help now,” Earthjustice attorney Todd True said.

Advocates for fishermen also hailed the decision to increase spill, saying it will produce larger adult salmon returns.

Proposals to remove the four dams have percolated in the Northwest for decades, and have devolved into a largely partisan issue with Democrats generally on the side of the fish and Republicans for keeping the dams.

The latest skirmish began in March 2017, when U.S. District Judge Michael Simon of Portland, Oregon, ordered the dams to increase spill beginning this spring. Federal agencies have estimated increasing spill until mid-June will cost electric ratepayers $40 million in lost power revenues in 2018 alone.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in early February rejected an appeal of Simon’s order.

The dams operate under a plan created by a collaboration of federal agencies, states and tribes during the Obama administration to protect salmon.

But Simon found it does not do enough. He ruled a new environmental study is needed, and it must consider the option of removing the dams. Simon also wrote that wild salmon were in a “precarious” state.

That was disputed by Terry Flores, executive director of Northwest RiverPartners, a group that includes farmers, utilities, ports and businesses.

Flores contended spilling so much water from the dams injects high levels of gas into the water, which can kill fish. The churning water at the dams also can prevent the next generation of returning salmon from accessing fish ladders and keep them from reaching spawning streams, she said.

“It’s a bad plan that will cost families and businesses, do little to help, and may even harm protected salmon, and add tons of carbon to our air,” Flores said of the spill. “We shouldn’t throw good money at a bad plan.”

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Patrick F. McManus, a prolific writer best known for his humor columns in fishing and hunting magazines who also wrote mystery novels and one-man comedy plays, has died. He was 84.

McManus died Wednesday evening at a nursing facility where he lived in Spokane, Washington, where he had been in declining health, Tim Behrens, who performed the one-man plays, said Friday.

“He was a warm man, he was a good man, he was a funny man,” Behrens said. “I look at him right up there with Mark Twain.”

McManus wrote monthly humor columns for more than three decades for the popular magazines Field & Stream and Outdoor Life, the columns later appeared in books. He also wrote other books, more than two dozen in all that included a guide for humor writers, and a series of mystery novels with a darker form of humor involving fictional Blight County, Idaho, and Sheriff Bo Tully. Altogether, he sold more than 5 million copies and appeared on the New York Times best-seller list.

Many of his characters are drawn from real people from his childhood in Sandpoint, Idaho, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northeast of Spokane, said Bill Stimson, a journalism professor at Eastern Washington University and former writing student of McManus at the same school. The two became lifelong friends.

The fictional Rancid Crabtree, for example, is a loner living in the woods who only cares about fishing and hunting and has no one telling him to go to school. Stimson said McManus told him that Crabtree is based on a real person that he found in the hills around Sandpoint as a child.

While many of his characters involve country bumpkins, McManus himself loved reading.

“He had a very scholarly interest in writing and literature,” Stimson said. “He read everything.”

He said McManus quit teaching in 1983 to write full time. He had been writing traditional journalism pieces until on a fluke he wrote a humorous piece about satellites tracking wildlife, Stimson said, that a magazine immediately bought.

“He was a very accomplished journalist to begin with, and then he found out he could make a lot more money as a humorist,” Stimson said. “He’s really the Mark Twain of the Northwest.”

McManus was also an accomplished painter, favoring watercolor landscapes, his wife Darlene McManus said in a prepared statement.

“Pat was a great observer of people. I think this was because he was an artist at heart,” Darlene said. “His stories were paintings with words.”

Patrick Francis McManus was born in Sandpoint on Aug. 25, 1933. His father died when McManus was 6.

“I can remember the isolation of living out on a little farm and everything being extremely hard and miserable,” he told Sandpoint Magazine in 1995. “But I don’t tend to think of it that way, and I think it’s because of the writing and transforming my early situation.”

Behrens said being poor during childhood was reflected in McManus’ writing.

“The lack of any kind of extravagance led to the ability to create entire imaginary worlds out of his walks in the mountains,” he said.

McManus, Stimson said, nearly flunked out of Washington State University but then got serious about writing, and remained so for the rest of his life, dedicating a certain part of each day to writing and telling his students to do the same.

Behrens has performed the six one-man plays McManus wrote for more than two decades. He said McManus would attend the early plays and listen to the audience reaction, then make changes to the play until he was satisfied.

“He would walk in the back of the theater, never sitting down,” Behrens said. “He would listen, and he would pace, and he would think. It took about 50 shows before one was set.”

McManus is survived by his wife, Darlene, four daughters, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A private service is tentatively planned for next week at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Sandpoint.

With hopes of making the race more attractive to community outsiders, Pocatello Pedal Fest board members are upping the ante for this summer’s mountain bike race by offering over $2,000 in cash prizes to those who finish high enough in their event.

It’s the most ever offered in the event’s nine-year history, race board members say.

The fastest male and female bikers will both receive a $500 prize in addition to what they already get for winning the race. Board members say the increase in winnings will serve as an incentive for mountain bike enthusiasts from across the region to attend the Pedal Fest activities, which will be held on June 8 and 9.

Last year, board members said the race saw about 140 participants, meaning if Pedal Fest is able to cap its 200-participant permit, it would mean a 43-percentage point increase in participation from the previous year, representing one of the starting inclines in Southeast Idaho’s recreational economy.

“The recreational economy is the untapped potential of the west,” said Martin Hackworth, a Pedal Fest board member.

The Pedal Fest board has been at the forefront of promoting Southeast Idaho’s recreational economy to the Rocky Mountain region. They put on races such as Pedal Fest and help organize other races in the area such as the Pocatello stage of the Idaho Enduro Series, a type of event that only times the downhill portions of the race, which comes to Pocatello on June 23.

With an abundance of high quality trails in the area, including the City Creek Trail System, where the race is primarily held, board member say that Pocatello is on the cusp of becoming the next hot tourist destination for mountain biking. Part of the reason the City Creek trails so desirable is because there is an abundance of high-quality trails that are easily accessible to the public, which are typically free of other riders.

“These trails were designed and built by people who knew what they were doing,” Hackworth said. “It’s not like some goat trail that somehow got in a travel plan somewhere and turned into a mountain bike trail. These are trails that were designed to be multi-use trails. The switchbacks, the climbs, the descents: all of it make sense.”

Unlike its regional powerhouse competitors such as Park City and Jackson Hole, Pocatello is a relatively affordable place to live, and a 2018 Singletracks.com list ranked Pocatello as the third-best mountain biking town with the lowest cost of living in the U.S.

“As far as mountain biking is concerned, it is absolutely blowing up,” said Tommy Gwinn, a Pedal Fest board member. “I think people are spending more money than ever on their equipment and traveling. It really is an up and coming sport.”

Hackworth said that outdoor recreation could be the next economic boost for Idaho, a state that still hasn’t recovered from the dismissal of its old industries. He added that Idaho could follow state such as Colorado, California and Utah in marketing its outdoor recreation activities, a much more stable industry he says, than farming, ranching and mining.

“Idaho is still in these early stages where we are trying to figure it out,” he said. “It’s not a mature and well-developed operation, but it is moving forward and there are some good people moving the ball.”

The fear is that the trails will become overcrowded, which will eventually turn into something that can no longer be promoted in the same way it currently is, showing off the old adage to “keep Idaho the way it is.”

“That’s great, but that’s an unobtainable model,” Hackworth said. “You can’t have things that are static in a changing world.”

Pedal Fest begins June 8 at Centennial Park with a pump track racing series, where the goal is to get all the way around the track without peddling using only gravity and momentum.

The following day, mountain bikers ascend into the City Creek trails beginning at 8:40 a.m. with a three-mile junior race. The longer adult races begin at 10:20 a.m. and include excursions of 27, 17 and 12 miles. Awards will be handed out at 2:30 p.m.

Visiting Yellowstone National Park and a number of other sites around the country will cost more this summer — but not as much as federal officials proposed last fall.

The National Park Service announced a nationwide fee increase Thursday that will bump prices at most fee-charging parks by $5 beginning June 1. Starting then, a weeklong pass to Yellowstone will cost $35 per car.

The National Park Service said it’s part of an effort to deal with its $11.6 billion deferred maintenance backlog. The agency estimates raising fees will boost annual revenue by roughly $60 million.

The announcement is starkly different from the agency’s proposal last fall, which recommended charging $70 during peak visitation months at Yellowstone and 16 other highly trafficked sites. Conservation groups and thousands of public commenters argued the increase was too steep, apparently convincing the department to change course.

In a news release, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said this increase is modest. He also said it’s one component of his plans to deal with the agency’s deferred maintenance backlog.

“This is just one of the ways we are carrying out our commitment to ensure that national parks remain world class destinations that provide an excellent value for families from all income levels,” Zinke said.

Montana’s two U.S. Senators applauded the decision. Republican Sen. Steve Daines said the state’s national parks “must remain affordable and accessible to all visitors.” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester said the previous increase proposal would have “undercut our state’s thriving outdoor economy.”

Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association and a critic of the original proposal, said in an emailed statement that the smaller fee increase is a “welcomed move.”

“Fees do have a role to play in our parks, and the administration’s move to abandon its original proposal in favor of more measured fee increases will put additional funds into enhancing park experiences without threatening visitation or local economies,” Pierno said.

Pierno also said Congress should put more money toward parks in future spending bills.

Holly Fretwell, a research fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, said in an emailed statement that the increase will help park managers prioritize park-specific maintenance needs.

“Park users should help protect our most treasured public lands and ensure they are available for the enjoyment of future generations,” Fretwell said.

The fee increase will affect all 117 of the National Park Service’s fee-charging sites — including Glacier and Grand Teton National Parks. Annual passes will cost more, too — $70 at Yellowstone. All-parks passes will remain $80.

Fees at Grand Teton will look identical to Yellowstone’s, but the fate of the two parks’ joint weekly pass is uncertain. Yellowstone spokeswoman Linda Veress said no decision has been made on whether to change the fee.

Park fees were last increased in 2015. That was the same year Grand Teton and Yellowstone stopped selling a joint annual pass.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Interior Department is increasing fees at the most popular national parks to $35 per vehicle, backing down from an earlier plan that would have forced visitors to pay $70 per vehicle to visit the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and other iconic parks.

A plan announced Thursday would boost fees at 17 popular parks by $5, up from the current $30 but far below the figure Interior proposed last fall.

The plan by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke drew widespread opposition from lawmakers and governors of both parties, who said the higher fees could exclude many Americans from enjoying national parks. The agency received more than 109,000 comments on the plan, most of them opposed.

The $35 fee applies mostly in the West and will affect such popular parks as Yellowstone, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain and Grand Teton parks, among others.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said the fee hikes were needed to help maintain the parks and begin to address an $11.6 billion maintenance backlog.

“Every dollar spent to rebuild our parks will help bolster the gateway communities that rely on park visitation for economic vitality,” Zinke said.

Zinke thanked those who made their voices heard through the public comment process: “Your input has helped us develop a balanced plan that focuses on modest increases,” he said.

The maintenance backlog “isn’t going to be solved overnight and will require a multi-tiered approach as we work to provide badly needed revenue to repair infrastructure,” Zinke added.

Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Park Conservation Association, hailed the revised plan.

“The public spoke, and the administration listened,” Pierno said. The plan to nearly triple fees at popular parks was opposed by a range of businesses, gateway communities, governors, tourism groups, conservation organizations and the public, who all “said this was the wrong solution for parks’ repair needs,” she said.

The revised fee plan is “a big win for park lovers everywhere,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.

“This is a prime example that activism works,” Grijalva added. “The American people raised their concerns, participated in the public comment period and made sure that the Trump White House knew the proposal was unpopular. If it wasn’t for the power of the people, Secretary Zinke would have gone ahead with his ridiculous proposal.”

Grijalva encouraged the public to speak out against a Trump administration plan to shrink some national monuments and open most U.S. coasts to oil drilling.

The plan announced Thursday sets a $5 increase for all parks that charge entrance fees. Parks that previously charged $15 will now charge $20; a $20 fee will rise to $25; and a $25 fee will now be $30.

The current $30 fee is the highest charged by the park service and applies to the 17 most-visited parks. More than two-thirds of national parks will remain free to enter.

Threats of war and chemical weapons are a part of the news recently, and there has been a palatable tension in the air. Many people are scared for the future.

Emergency preparedness, though stereotypically looked at as a psychosis by some, has been shown to help people feel a little less stressed over troubles in the real world.

Emergency preparedness is something that everyone should find important. Why do you have health insurance? Why do you buy car insurance? Why do you keep your car in working order? Even simple questions like this are answered by the idea of emergency preparedness. You prepare for the day you need it.

You have health insurance in case you or your family get sick and they need some professional care. You have car insurance in case someone runs into your car and it is your only mode of transportation. You keep your car running in case you want to run to grandma’s house. This is why emergency preparedness is important — in case something happens and you need to protect your family.

Time and time again when there is the threat of a natural disaster, there is a sense of panic in the stores. Shelves are emptied and people are left without. The thought of my family being without food and shelter has always been a big support of my prepping enthusiasm.

Ready.gov and FEMA.com are just a few websites that really support the need for emergency prepping. Even those people who wonder why LDS people can and save food, there has been support for self sufficiency and preparedness in the LDS church.

The easiest place to start is now. Don’t think about how much you have to get, just think of what you can do now. Peruse the sale items and non-perishables. If you go to the grocery store once or twice a month, plan on using an extra $5 to purchase canned goods.

Once you have them at home, put them in a cool, dry place. Each time you go to the store, keep doing this. And in no time you will have a food store for your family. A good rule of thumb is, if you don’t eat the same goods now, why do you think this will change in an emergency? Get food that will be nutritious but something that your family will eat.

To supplement your food stores, start thinking about saving water. If every person in your family were to survive over a week without any amenities, you will need to get 3 gallons of water, per person, per day. This is the standard amount from every emergency preparedness site.

Some people save water by refilling their 2-liter bottles after drinking pop. Some people use milk gallons. However, I wouldn’t recommend this because it needs a little extra care to ensure there won’t be bacteria inside.

The large 50-gallon blue tubs are always a good choice. They are usually $30 a piece or less if you know someone who sells them. I recommend the water blocks ($30 for 10 on Amazon). These blocks are stackable and they hold around 12 gallons a piece. They are safe to store on concrete and carpet and come with a water proof cap and carrying handles. I have used them for years and they are very handy.

Next week there will be an article on bug out bags and why it is important to build yours now. Take a look around at your house. Some of the best preps are ones you may do instinctually. Emergency preparedness is important because of the little “in case” situations that happen in life.

Emily Thornton is currently working on her masters in communication at Idaho State University. She enjoys writing, racing after her son and playing games with her husband.