There have been a lot of tweets over the past forty-eight hours about dealing with the aftermath of the quake, and a lot of it is actually the opposite of what you should do.

The most important three things you can do:

1. Don’t panic.

2. Secure your safety before you try to secure the safety of others. If you can’t help yourself, you’re useless to anybody else.

3. If there are emergency personnel, do what they tell you to, and stay the hell out their way otherwise. These guys train day-in and day-out to handle this, and you will just slow them down if you jump in and ‘help’ without them asking you to.

If you’re at home and safe, but in an area where transportation and supplies are limited:

1. Get enough food to keep yourself for a week. Focus on staple goods that won’t readily spoil, such as rice, as well as fruits like oranges and bananas.

2. DON’T buy everything in the store. You don’t need a year’s worth of supplies.

3. Get a flashlight if you can, as well as matches and candles. If you lose power, but not gas, you’ll need the matches to light the stove.

4. If you don’t have one, buy a fire extinguisher. The fire department is busy right now, and if you drop a match onto something flammable, you might need to handle it on your own.

5. Don’t spend a bunch of time on the phone chatting with people. Communication networks are overloaded as is, and your call is probably not the most important.