Carpets & Flooring
CRI Articles
IEHA Articles
IICRC Articles
Features
Do the blaring sirens of fire trucks and ambulances give you the willies? If you’re like most people that answer is a resounding yes. Nobody likes to think of emergencies, but they creep into all of our lives, like it or not. Just watch the news and you’ll see coverage of homes torn apart by tornadoes, towns destroyed by hurricanes, and trees felled by lightning storms. And that’s just the natural disasters. Anyone who lived through the harrowing images of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. knows that emergencies strike when you are least expecting them. Whether you live in a flood zone or make your home in a part of the country known for its earthquakes, it’s important to spend a little time to get you and your family ready for anything that might come your way.
Some people think it’s “bad juju” to plan ahead for what might go wrong, as if the mere act of thinking about it will bring about calamity. But putting it off only means that if an emergency strikes, you and your family will be at a significant disadvantage.
The good news is it doesn’t have to take days to get yourself ready. Here are five things that you can do over the course of a week, or the next month to get your ducks in a row.
1. Organize an Emergency Plan. Creating an emergency plan does not have to take more than 10 minutes. First, know your evacuation routes, ideally identify one or two options. Second, designate specific meeting places both close to home and farther away in case you are separated. Finally, get contact information for an out-of-state person that everyone can contact to relay news in case you are separated. Visit www.GetButtonedUp.com/tools to get a free printable checklist of what you should include in an emergency plan.
2. Hold a State of the Union. An emergency plan is useless if other people living with you don’t know about it. Take the time to discuss it as a group. Ensure that everybody is aware and knows exactly what to do, where to go, and who to contact. Pick a night this week to sit down as a family and go over your plan.
3. Document Your Valuables. Don’t wait until you have to file a home insurance claim before you realize, “Wow, I really should have made that home inventory video.” Preparation and anticipation of the worst-case scenario is very important when it comes to properly filing home insurance claims. Walk room-to-room with a camera or pen and paper and document furniture, electronics, collectibles, clothes, and other items of value. Estimate the replacement value for each and check that you have adequate insurance. Save the list and the photos as a digital file and, even if it is rough, send it to another person such as a relative, a trusted accountant, or lawyer for safekeeping.
4. Have Records Ready. You can’t grab your filing cabinet and take it with you in an emergency. But you can grab a binder, such as the Life.doc, an accordion folder, or laptop computer. Make sure you have your most important information organized and ready to go in case something happens. Having it organized this way also means that, if something happens to you, others will know where to find the information.
5. Organize Your Emergency Kit. The one thing those horrible images of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation taught all of us is that you may need to survive on your own after an emergency – for at least a week. You could have to live without running water, gas, electricity, sewage treatment, and telephones, which means you need to have your own non-perishable food items, water, and other first-aid supplies at the ready. The easiest thing to do is buy a ready-made emergency kit. But if you want to put one together by yourself, be sure to set aside a gallon of water per person per day, canned food, cash, and a first aid kit in a waterproof box. Make sure you have enough of each of these things to last each person in the house five days.
