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Disaster Preparedness

By Gilbert Griffiths

With hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, landslides, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires and other disasters increasing in frequency and severity, it pays to be prepared. Here are some tips to lessen the impact a disaster will have on you.

1.Your home and/or contents are the largest and most personal purchases that you will make. Therefore, it only makes sense to protect these investments with replacement value insurance. Make sure that your policy covers disasters. If money is tight, then forgo that daily trip to Starbucks or skip trips to McDonald's or other extras you currently buy. Loss of your house and/or contents will have a far bigger impact on your life than a few missed extras.

2.Photograph every room in your house from all angles to show the contents to their best advantage. Open cupboards and take pictures of what is stored there. If you can't see it to advantage, then take whatever it is out of where it is stored and put it on a table or other surface to get a clear picture of it. Once you have photos of everything in your home, have two copies printed, either as digital images on CD's or hard copy photos. Take one copy of your photos to your insurance agent and have it placed in your insurance file. Keep one set for yourself and place it in an evacuation container. (More about this shortly.)

3.Make an evacuation list. This list should contain the names of all the items you cannot replace such as photo albums, a back-up copy of your computer hard drive, one of a kind jewelry, etc., keeping in mind that you will have to grab these items as you rush to a place of safety. Post this list on your refrigerator using tape or fridge magnets.

4.If you have pets, make provisions for their safety if possible. Your pets are your responsibility to care for during their life with you. They should only be abandoned when to take them would jeopardize your life or the life of another person. You should make two lists of your pets, their species and names and emergency contact phone numbers. Place these lists in clear plastic bags, such as Ziploc freezer bags or lunch bags and label each bag with the word PETS or PETS INSIDE. Attach one bag to your front door with tape or magnets and one to your rear or back door. In this way, rescue personnel will know your house contains pets and the list will provide the type of pets to look for and the name of each one. It will also provide phone numbers of people they can call to get someone to take care of any pets that are rescued. If you take the pets with you when you evacuate, then remove the bags as you leave, so emergency personnel are not detained looking for pets that are no longer there.

5.You should have a small, easy to carry evacuation container placed in an easily accessible location. Make sure all family members know where this container is located. Keep a copy of your property photos in this container as well as small “must save” items. The photos will remind you of the things you had in your home. The shock of seeing it a pile of ashes, smashed apart by winds or earthquake, or sitting in a body of water, will affect your memory, so the photos will ensure that you get everything replaced. Note! Most insurance policies have limits on replacement of certain items. For example, paintings, jewelry, coin collections, stamp collections, cash and fur coats all have limits. However, for an extra fee, you can get “riders” attached to your basic policy to cover the true value of these types of items. This will probably require you to have an evaluation done of these type of items by an expert in the field. Some insurance companies will require 3 evaluations, each done by a different expert.

6.Try and group together the items that you want to take when you evacuate. For example, place all your photo albums together, don't have them scattered all over the house. Ensure regular back-up copies of your computer hard drive are created and replace the back-up copies in your evacuation container with the latest backup. My daughter just purchased a 650 MB external hard drive from Walmart for $50. She plans on using it for storing digital copies of all her photographs. In this way she just unplugs the USB cable and the power cable and walks out with a small hard drive containing her hundreds of photos. Small, light and capable of allowing her to replace her most treasured keepsakes.

This Intel is by no means exhaustive of all that you should do to prepare for recovery from a disaster, so if you can think of other things, please record them in a comment attached to this Intel.

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE

Birdhouse Publishing
A blog providing information on pets
birdhousepublishing.blogspot.com

Thanks Gilbert for the great common sense advice that we sometimes forget about.

You're very welcome James. We all get busy in our every day life, and unfortunately for some, forget about things that need to be done to ensure that our every day life can continue even if the unthinkable occurs.

Gilbert

Thanks for sharing these great tips Gilbert. I live in Houston, Texas so hurricane season is definitely upon us. So in the event of any type of emergency, its wise to have a pre set game plan in place. I'll be following your future intels...
Gina

Thanks Gina,

Keep safe. Hurricanes are nothing to become complacent about. I think that complacency played a large part in the affect Katrina had on New Orleans. Everyone just assumed the embankments, etc would hold and it would be just like hurricanes that had come before. It wasn't, things failed and disaster struck. Being prepared may not have lessened the impact of that hurricane, but it would have ensured a much quicker recovery from it.

gilbertg

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