When you know something whether it’s a flood, a hurricane, a tornado, mudslide, fire, all terrible things to think about, the fact to the matter is we need to think about them and we need to think about them before something happens and use the old Boy Scout motto of Be Prepared.
We hope you never ever suffer any of these catastrophes. But since one can occur very quickly and without a moments warning, here’s what you really need to do to protect yourself so that you're ready to go should disasters strike.
First off, you need to create a plan, you that, you hear the jokes about it, with the you know terrorism, threats and everything about it, Oh my god! Yes, the family well they got to meet here and if that doesn’t work they’re going to meet somewhere else. Well it’s really not such a stupid thing to do, to make a plan because you know, disasters don’t strike waiting for everybody to get home first. They can happen in the middle of the day while one of your children is in school, another is at their job, your husband’s at work, the wife may be at the grocery store or working herself. See, you need to pick a place to meet, establish a contact person for your family, preferably someone not in your community, best out of state. Because if there’s a disruption of communications in and around your area, you probably won't run into that problem with someone over the state line, so pick that and also plan for your pets. You know most shelter do not allow, in fact I think all shelters do not allow pets on the premises in times of disaster. What would you do with fight over fluffy if something happened?
Keep emergency supplies in your home and refresh them every 6 months like food and water because you can store that for up to 6 months. Find a little place and just put some of that there, also store items in pre-packaged, pre-packed duffle bags or back pack so that god forbid, you can just pick it up and run out the door. Include first aid kit in your planning, a battery powered radio and make sure you have extra batteries for it, a flashlight and extra batteries for those as well. You also may want an extra set of car keys some place because sometimes in moments of panic, you forget where you put your car keys. And place important documents in a water proof container, either a bag of some sort or a small box so that you can pick those up with you as you hurry up the door. Find you main electrical box, your water main box, any of the important utilities that come in to your home and learn how to turn these items off. Once you’ve managed that and in case of natural gas you may want to get somebody in that knows what they're doing before you start fooling around.
Show every member of the family how to turn off the water and how to turn off the gas. And while you’re at it, keep the appropriate tools that might be needed to do it right by those boxes.
If you do have to evacuate, please remember to bring at least one change of clothing, an extra pair of shoes. Remember the time of year, if it’s the winter time in any cold area, make sure you have a good heavy jacket, muffler, hat, gloves, all of these other things. And have blankets or sleeping bags ready because if you are forced to go a shelter somewhere, they don’t have many of these items to share with people who show up unprepared.
If you have a certain medical needs, pack those medicines in and pack some vitamins along with the food supply. And for more information on all of these, as I say, we hope you never need to any of it. But do get a good grounding and what constitutes disaster preparedness by going to www.FEMA.gov, that’s F-E-M-A.gov/areyouready. Good luck.
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