When it comes to facing mother nature’s fury, the best you can do is to equip yourself to lessen the impact these natural disasters may have. Take some of these basic steps in our hurricane preparedness guide to keep you and your entire family safe during the hurricane season.
RELATED: Essential Survival Tips From A Hurricane Irma Survivor
9 Tips to Prepare Your Family for the Hurricane Season
1. Create a Hurricane Action Plan
Map out your hurricane preparedness plans long before the season starts. Get everything together by remembering to do the following early:
- Study hurricane categories. This is very important when assessing the amount of preparation you might have to do.
- Order supplies and materials in advance, especially those that are not available in your local area.
- Do not make the mistake of shopping during that last-minute rush.
- Gather important documents you might need to bring with you should your home suffer heavy damages because of mother nature’s fury.
- It is also the ideal time to check your insurances and make sure that they are still updated.
- Create a list of emergency numbers in your local area. Put them up near your phones, and save them into your mobiles as well.
- Go over your entire hurricane preparedness plan with your family so everyone knows what to do in any scenario. This should ensure that no one in the family panics when faced with disasters like these.
2. Prioritize Water
In any disaster scenario, water should be your priority when gathering supplies.
- Make sure to maintain a water supply of at least a gallon per person in your household per day.
- Your water supply should be good for at least 3 days, but if possible, even up to 2 weeks.
- You can purchase sealed and purified drinking water for about a dollar per gallon from your local grocery.
- If you’re on a budget, then you can also buy water containers instead and fill them with water for storage.
3. Keep Communication Lines Open
Having the ability to stay in touch with the outside world is essential in disaster scenarios. It should help you obtain the information you need especially during the hurricane’s onslaught, and reach out for help if necessary.
Unfortunately, if the power goes down because of the hurricane, you will have to find alternative modes of communication. Make sure you have these with you:
- Your mobile phone or even an old-school crank radio.
- Hand-cranked mobile phone charger as well.
- Power banks, make sure they are fully charged before the hurricane arrives.
RELATED: Disaster Communication For Preppers | Preparedness
5. Gather Your Supplies
Every hurricane preparedness plan will tell you to gather your food supplies in advance. Make sure to buy food items that will last for at least a few months.
If this may take a bit of a toll on your budget, then build your emergency food supply slowly. Start by gathering food supplies that will last for up to 3 days at first. From there, slowly work your way up until you have food that is good for at least 2 weeks.
To make sure these don’t go to waste, maintain a list of the items in your storage. Monitor their expiry dates and rotate out the ones that may expire soon. Use them in your kitchen and replace them with a fresh set on your next trip to the grocery.
If you can, try to purchase food that your family prefers. This should help keep morale up, which is a necessity when facing calamities.
Do you have pets? It’s important to prepare for their needs as well.
6. Assemble an Emergency Kit
Aside from the items mentioned above, an emergency kit should also contain at least the following:
- A first aid kit
- A water filtration system
- Sanitation supplies including paper towels, baby wipes, bleach, heavy-duty garbage bags, and the like
- Light sources such as flashlights or candles and matches
- Batteries
- Insect repellants
- Prescription medications and other over the counter medicines
Keep all of these in one place, and preferably in a container that is easy to carry. This will be useful should your family need to evacuate at some point.
You should also take note of any special medication your family might need and stock up on these. Your local pharmacies may not be available so easily after a hurricane hits.
7. Make Your Home Hurricane Ready
Before the disaster hits, double-check the contents of your toolbox.
Basic contents should include:
- some screws
- duct tape
- screwdrivers
- hammer
- some plywood and tarps ready in your garage just in case your home needs some repairs after the hurricane hits.
Next, go outside your home and inspect it for possible hazards. If there are things that could be blown around such as bikes, lawn furniture, grills, and the like, then store them inside your home.
Check the roof of your house as well. You might want to reinforce the nails on your house’s roofing to ensure that they remain secured once the hurricane arrives. This should also be a good time to get rid of leaves that may be blocking your gutters.
Additionally, if you have trees around your house, trim branches that may snap and cause damage to your home. You can also secure your windows by covering them up with strips of plywood from the outside frames.
8. Prepare for Evacuation
When it comes to hurricane preparedness, evacuation should always be a scenario you are prepared for. Keep your ears open for announcements on news channels that it is time to evacuate. When you hear this, do so at once.
How to prepare for an evacuation:
- Start by filling your car’s gas tank at least 2 days before the hurricane hits.
- It is also ideal to keep a separate emergency kit inside your car.
- Bring with you only what is essential such as your IDs, cellphones and chargers, cash, and your emergency kit (if you don’t already have one in your car).
- Make sure to turn off the main power supply of your house as well.
- Follow the roads you mapped out before, and turn on the radio so you know if some of these may already be blocked due to flooding or fallen debris.
9. Keep Some Entertainment Ready
In an electronics devices-dependent world, a power outage is one of the most difficult things to adjust to. When this happens, make sure you and your family have something to keep yourselves entertained, as the power may not be back so quickly after the hurricane hits.
- Old pocketbooks and magazines
- Crafting activities like knitting
- Painting, or cross-stitching
- Old-school puzzles and board games.
During times of emergencies like these, it is of utmost importance that morale is kept high and tempers do not get in the way of the proper responses to the emergencies. Make sure you keep that morale high among the members of your family by keeping them entertained during the disaster.
If you are done with all the hurricane preparedness tips above, then maybe try taking it up a notch by building your very own watertight underground bunker and food cache. Learn how with this video courtesy of Atlas Survival Shelters:
No matter how much you may want to, you can never stop an incoming hurricane or tropical storm. With the comprehensive hurricane preparedness guide we prepared above, however, you should be fully equipped for the entire hurricane season.
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Do you have questions about the hurricane preparedness tips we shared above? Ask them in the comments section below!
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- Here’s What Your Hurricane Survival Kit Should Look Like
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