Did you know that September is National Preparedness Month in the USA?
I don’t blame you if you didn’t know that. No such thing existed for most of my life, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been sponsoring September as National Preparedness Month since 2004. The month is really mistitled because my research into National Preparedness Month makes it clear that FEMA’s primary goal is to urge Americans to prepare for an emergency.
FEMA’s web site lists 14 natural disasters that it believes Americans should prepare for — drought, earthquakes, extreme heat, floods, hurricanes, landslides, severe weather, space weather, thunderstorms & lightning, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, wildfires, and winter storms.
FEMA has a lot of advice about how to prepare for an emergency. It has detailed advice on how people should prepare for an emergency, how they can formulate and communicate a plan to family members as well as friends and work colleagues, what to put in an emergency kit that needs to be organized before the disaster, and how to help people during and after the disaster.
FEMA has dozens of pages of information on how to prepare for an emergency. I’ve reviewed a considerable amount of FEMA’s information and have boiled its advice into seven tips to prepare for an emergency. They are:
1. Find Location Of Emergency Shelters: A key part of preparation is finding out where your community’s emergency shelters are. The local police department and/or City Hall can often tell you. During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, I stayed in a high school with my dog. In fact, the local police department drove me and Susie there. Oftentimes, the emergency shelters are a few miles from major bodies of water like the Atlantic Ocean. Driving to a hotel dozens of miles away from where the disaster is expected to occur is also an option. Figuring out where in your business or home is the safest place to stay during a storm can also be crucial. A basement without windows might be the best place to hide during a tornado.
2. Formulate A Family Communications Plan: Prior to an emergency, family members should discuss how they should contact each other during an emergency as well as where to meet if they can’t reach other via phone or any other communications device. All family members, including children, should carry a contact card with the names and phone numbers of each other in a wallet or backpack. The contact card should include phone numbers for offices and schools. Families should also make a decision long before the emergency about how to take care of their pets when disaster strikes.
3. Formulate A Travel Plan: A travel plan should be part of your family communications plan. It should include planning to travel to the homes of family members or friends who probably won’t be affected by an emergency in your community as well as those people traveling to your home. This is important because weather forecasters can often predict disasters in advance. Of course, you have to discuss these travel plans in advance and. The travel plan should include contingencies for travel via your own auto, a rental car, or public transportation.
4. Think About Your Business: Buying the right insurance can protect you from disastrous financial losses if you can’t work for a significant time during and after a disaster because you have been hurt or your business is closed because of property damage. Business owners and managers should formulate a plan before an emergency that includes how employees and managers should communicate with each other, how work responsibilities should be restructured if some people can’t work or get to work while others who live in a different locale can, and a business succession plan if they can’t work for a significant amount of time.
5. Make Sure You Have Adequate Water And Food: FEMA’s recommendations for what to put in an emergency kit include a three-day supply of water and food. What’s a three-day supply? According to FEMA, normally active people should drink approximately three quarters of a gallon of fluids daily. Water is preferred. As for food, FEMA recommends nonperishable foods, including canned foods with lots of liquid as well as whole grain cereals and salt-free crackers and other food that won’t make you thirsty.
6. Organize Other Emergency Supplies: An emergency kit should also include medical supplies such as bandages, prescription medicines and pain relievers. Packing sanitary products such as garbage bags, soap, toilet paper, toothbrushes, and toothpaste is also important. FEMA’s other recommendations include local maps, a flashlight with extra batteries, a radio, a cell phone with a charger, and a manual can opener.
7. Help The Community: Volunteering with a nonprofit organization in your community before an emergency can result in you being trained to help your neighbors during a disaster. Communities also might be preparing financially for an emergency. Financial donations are preferable to “unsolicited donated goods such as used clothing, miscellaneous household items, and mixed or perishable foodstuffs,” reports FEMA.
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