Hurricane Preparedness Week Starts Sunday
Hurricane season starts June 1st, which is only ten days away. This is typically a time when those of us who live on the gulf coast go through our annual preparedness checklist. However, as I write this blog post there are wild fires burning in San Diego county California, serious drought throughout the South West region of the country, tornadoes touching down in the Midwest, and flooding in the South East. Therefore, it is a good time for everyone to revisit their preparedness checklist no matter where you live. Our checklist typically consists of firing up the generator to make sure it still works. If you left gas in the generator and did not add a fuel stabilizer you might find it difficult to start. Any other mechanical devices such as chain saws also need to be fired up. We check all of our flash lights to make sure they work and recharge any batteries on a monthly basis. We have a stockpile of rechargeable batteries that need to be charged up periodically as they slowly loose power over time. A monthly routine of rotating these batteries through a charger keeps them constantly topped off. Other electronic equipment such as radios also needs to be tested and recharged monthly.
An inventory of your food supplies is in order. We recommend having at least 30 days of food on hand. Any items that need to be rotated now would be a good time to buy their replacements. Water is also rotated this week. We keep enough stored water to last 30 days. This equates to one gallon per person per day. For a family of four that is 120 gallons and not an insignificant amount. Old water is used in the garden so it does not go to waste. This water needs to be treated so adding a capful of bleach is required to prevent algae in your water containers.
If the power goes out you will need a means of cooking your food so we make sure that our propane grill and propane camp stove have plenty of fuel containers. A supply of charcoal and/or fire wood is a good idea as well for a backup.
We go through all of our preparedness kits and conduct an inventory to make sure everything is in place and replenished. An inventory sheet is a nice idea to quickly check off items as you review them. Each kit has a digital set of our critical documents so these need to be reviewed and updated as well. Any changes to insurance, home inventory, financial records or other pertinent items must be gone through on a regular basis.
The disaster plan is also reviewed at this time of year. We have a family sit down so as to inform every one of the plans contents. Subjects such as how we would communicate with each other, evacuation routes and other critical subjects are discussed.
As you can clearly see preparedness is not a casual task. Disaster preparedness takes planning. We have a few free resources on our blog you can download to help. If you want to go through our entire preparedness process, then your can refer to our book The Lazy Survivalist Guide: To Emergency and Disaster Preparedness to learn more. Just click on the link below.
Let us know what steps you take to prepare. Leave a reply and give us any tips so as to spread the word to all our readers.
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