Saturday, January 12, 2008

Is Your Family Prepared?


Nobody wants to think of the possibility that something bad could happen to your family during a natural disaster, but with the flood coming just a few miles from my home and effecting many of my friends and community members, I realize just how vulnerable and unprepared we really are.
Hoping to become a little more prepared, I've been doing a little research on-line and found that the Red Cross has an AMAZING site filled with usefuil tips, checklists, and just about everything you need to prepare your family for the unexpected.
One thing that I found particularly interesting was the suggestion to call Red Cross to find out what disasters are most likely to happen. This would have been very helpful in our town, because most people did not expect a flood in a desert, but, if they had checked here they would have known we actually are living in a flood plain.
Some things we will be doing include:
1. Making a disaster plan with set locations to go if anything were to happen- one locally and one a little further out. We will also give family members these phone numbers to reach us in an emergency.
2. Checking our our insurance coverage to make sure we understand ALL of our coverages and lack of.
3. Preparing a disaster kit and putting all important papers in a fire proof safe that is easy to grab if we were evacuated.

7 comments:

Casdok said...

Good thinking to plan ahead, i think when you have a family it certainly is a good idea to be prepared.

Don Mills Diva said...

Good advice - thanks for sharing!

Zoe said...

i was just recently thinking about this. we are not prepared...i need to add that to my list.

Dapoppins said...

All the important papers...I never thought about that. Great point.

Anonymous said...

it's kind of funny in a peculiar way how we tend to think we are isolated from a disaster (especially a natural one)
Very good reminder to be prepared.

Anonymous said...

Planning is so important! We live in Indiana and we are flooding now. Not my immediate family but many friends. We also live in the path of many tornadoes, so I always try and stay ready. During the tornado season I always keep rain parkas, boots and flashlights all together for an emergency exit. We also try and keep enough canned food and also water for a few days just in case the power goes out. Thanks for getting the ideas out there!

Unknown said...

Thanks Kelly to share these tips with us. Such things can happen in every country of the world and with the warming up of the earth it happens also on place where you don't expect it.

Take your precautions and be safe; I don't want that you will suffer.