Building your evacuation bag, piece by piece.

A 40 to 55 litre backpack

The size that holds 3 days of self-sufficiency without turning into a move. Below 40 L you'll run out of room the moment warm clothing goes in; above 55 L the temptation to overfill becomes irresistible.

Convertible carry-on, 60 L

If you're evacuating by car rather than on foot, the priorities change: it's no longer about carrying comfort but about volume and quick access. This size opens flat like a suitcase, converts into a duffle, and fits as carry-on baggage if the evacuation takes you as far as an airport.

Waterproof compression sacks

3 or 4 sacks in different colours, and the contents stop being a jumble: one for clothing, one for food, one for electronics. You find what you're looking for without emptying everything onto the ground, and nothing gets wet.

Stainless steel bottle, 1 litre

A single-wall stainless bottle fills, carries — and sits directly on coals to boil water. It's your purification method of last resort, the one that works when the filter is frozen or clogged.

Sawyer Mini — screw-on filter

My first choice for a bag, precisely because it screws onto a standard water bottle or a hydration bladder: you fill, you screw it on, you drink while walking. No battery, no chemicals, no waiting.

LifeStraw — personal filter

Simpler still: you drink straight from the source. It filters up to 4,000 litres and fits in a coat pocket. Get one per person — it's the cheapest item that solves the biggest problem.

Aquatabs — purification tablets

The filter's spare tire: one tablet per litre, 30 minutes of waiting, and the water is drinkable. It weighs a few grams, it doesn't freeze, and it almost never expires. No reason to go without.

Rations and bars — 72 hours of energy

Granola bars, peanut butter in sachets, nuts, dried fruit, jerky. The criterion that comes first: it can be eaten as is, cold, with no dishes. Military-style compressed rations are a compact option, but taste them before you count on them.

Freeze-dried meals

This is what completes the survival bars: a real hot meal, around 500 to 600 kcal, ready in about 10 minutes. You pour boiling water straight into the pouch, wait, and eat out of it — no dishes, and no extra container to carry.

Manual can opener

A few dollars, a few grams — and without it, a can stays a can. It's the most frequent oversight in the bags I inspect. A sturdy model, tied to the bag with a cord.

Pocket stove and fuel

A hot coffee or a soup completely changes the mood of an evening outdoors, and it's what makes the freeze-dried meals usable. This model folds flat like a glasses case, weighs almost nothing, and burns solid fuel tablets just as well as twigs gathered on the spot — the dual-fuel tabletop stove from the shop, on the other hand, stays at home.

Solid fuel tablets

The folding stove is useless without them. A 15 g tablet burns for about 10 minutes, with no flickering flame and no black smoke — enough for one freeze-dried pouch or 2 cups of coffee. 20 tablets fit in a box the size of a deck of cards.

Mylar emergency bivy

Choose the bivy version rather than the plain blanket: it reflects heat back over the whole body and blocks the wind, whereas a blanket slips off the moment you move. 2 per person — one to wrap up in, the other to insulate you from the ground.

Reflective waterproof poncho

Staying dry is half the battle against the cold. A roomy poncho covers the person and the pack — and this one is heat-reflective, so it doubles as a survival blanket once wrapped around you. 2 functions in a single item, which is rare in a bag where every gram counts.

Insulated work gloves

Hands are the first thing to freeze — and once frozen, they make you useless: no more zippers, no more knots, no more lighter. A leather pair with an insulating liner holds the heat while still letting you handle wood, sheet metal or broken glass, unlike ski mittens, which are warm but good for nothing the moment you have to work. They're also the gloves you pull on to push aside a branch or a piece of twisted sheet metal along the way: a single pair covers both the cold and the debris.

Stormproof matches

A lighter freezes, runs empty, or simply refuses to light when wet. These matches burn in wind and rain, and relight themselves after being dunked in water. 25 matches in a waterproof case with spare strikers: it's the most reliable fire insurance there is, gram for gram.

Waterproof tinder wicks

Tinder makes no spark of its own: it turns a spark into fire, which is the real problem when the wood is damp. 3 wax-infused hemp wicks, waterproof, cut to whatever length you need; each wick burns up to an hour according to the maker. The aluminium tube included works as a bellows to coax the ember along.

Headlamp — one per person

A headlamp beats a flashlight for one reason: it leaves both hands free to carry, to set up a shelter or to hold a child. A red mode keeps you from blinding everyone under the tent.

A 10,000 mAh power bank

2 to 3 full phone charges, for the weight of a pop can. Recharge it at the time changes, at the same time as you check the rest of the bag: a battery forgotten 3 years in a drawer doesn't give much back.

Spare batteries, one single size

Choose your devices so they all share the same battery size — AA for preference. A full set of spares in a hard case, stored outside the devices: a battery that leaks inside a lamp destroys it.

Folding solar panel

Useful if the evacuation stretches beyond 3 days. For a bag, stay with a light 20 to 28 W model with USB outputs: larger installations belong to self-sufficiency at home, a subject I cover on the solar page.

Midland ER310 — hand-crank emergency radio

It picks up Environment Canada weather alerts and public radio, recharges by crank or by sun, and gives a phone an emergency top-up over USB. It's your source of information when nothing else works.

Emergency whistle

A whistle carries a kilometre and doesn't wear out your voice, which gives out after a few minutes of shouting. One per person, tied to the shoulder strap — not stored at the bottom. It's the cheapest and most useful item on the whole list.

Motorola T470 — licence-free radios

Communication that depends on no network: when the cell towers go down, these still work. And unlike programmable radios, these require no certificate — they are Family Radio Service units, licence-exempt in Canada. Weatherproof, and they pick up weather alerts. About the advertised range: manufacturers quote kilometres measured mountaintop to mountaintop. In wooded terrain, count on one to 2 kilometres — plenty to stay in touch around a house, a property, or between 2 vehicles travelling together.

Paper road map and contact list

A map of your region with the family meeting point circled, and a laminated list of the important numbers. Nobody knows a phone number by heart any more: the day the phone is dead, that sheet is worth more than everything else in the bag.

Print it, laminate it with wide packing tape, slip it into the outside pocket. Cost: zero.

Compact 7×25 binoculars

Seeing at a distance saves you from going out: the level of a waterway, the state of a road, smoke on the horizon. As compact as a pair of sunglasses. At dusk, though, an objective that small darkens fast.

First aid kit

This is the item where the price genuinely earns itself — and this one isn't an ordinary first aid kit but a trauma kit. Its difference comes down to a single object: it contains a tourniquet. That's what separates a kit that can treat a hemorrhage from a kit that can treat a scratch.

Dräger N95 masks

2 per person. Their most likely use in Quebec isn't medical but connected to wildfire smoke, which made the air hard to breathe several summers in a row, or to dust after a collapse.

Your medication — 7 days ahead

This is the most important point in this step, and the most often neglected. A week of each prescription medication, a copy of the prescriptions, the list of allergies, and spare glasses. Ask your pharmacist to print your medication profile: it's free and it fits on one sheet.

Note the expiry date on the calendar and rotate twice a year, at the same time as the rest of the bag.

Potassium iodide (KI)

In the event of a radioactive iodine release, it saturates the thyroid and stops it from taking up radioactive iodine. That is all it does: no protection against other forms of radiation. Only on the instruction of public health authorities — the dose depends on age. In Quebec the risk is low: Gentilly-2 has been shut down since 2012. But it keeps for years and weighs nothing.

Waterproof document pouch

Photocopies of identity documents, of the home insurance policy, of the mortgage contract or the lease, of vaccination records, and a recent photo of every member of the family — pets included, so they can be found. These ones are transparent: you read your papers without taking them out, so without exposing them to the rain at a shelter counter, and the touchscreen works through the plastic — enough to keep a phone dry and usable inside.

Cash, in small bills

$200 to $300 in $5, $10 and $20 bills. Without power, payment terminals and ATMs don't work — and a merchant with no change won't give you anything back on a $100 bill. Plan for some coins as well, for a vending machine.

Hygiene kit

A ready-made basic set — toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, soap, comb — in 6 units: one per person, or enough to last several days for 2. It's the category people cut first because it looks trivial, and it's the one that changes the mood of a third day the most.

Compact duct tape

The usual advice is to wind 10 metres or so of tape around a pencil rather than carry the whole roll. This format does it for you: 9 metres in a case the size of a pebble, with a water-resistant shell that keeps the tape from sticking to itself at the bottom of the bag. It repairs a torn pack, a separated sole, a tent pole — and it immobilizes an ankle in a pinch.

550 paracord

15 metres is enough in the bag: it rigs a shelter, replaces a bootlace, hangs food out of reach of animals, ties a bag onto a car roof. This one goes further than ordinary paracord — alongside the 7 nylon strands it carries fishing line, waxed fire-starter tinder and utility wire, braided inside. 3 more tools, without a gram more.

Multi-tool with pliers

One tool, but a good one. The pliers close a water or gas valve, the small serrated blade gets through a rope or a strap, and the wire cutter through a fence. It is the piece you take out once or twice a year, and that day it stands in for a toolbox.