This past year across the United States has been filled with fires, floods, and storms. A lot of people have been left in the dark with nowhere to go and no preparation. If you have a natural disaster plan, review this list of must haves to make sure you are prepared for anything!
If you live in a high risk area, along with having a natural disaster kit, make sure to carefully plan out evacuation routes and always take advice from authorities when they are evacuating neighborhoods. Your life is more important than your home and belongings.
- Prescription medications: If you take any medications make sure to have extra on hand and packed away in your evacuation bag. Rotate them regularly to avoid expiration.
- Sleeping bags: So simple yet so important, in an emergent situation you never know where you’ll end up. Keep yourself warm and cozy with a sleeping bag.
- Water bottles and food bars: Food and water are necessities for survival! If a disaster is bad enough it’s hard to know where you might come across food and clean water again, have enough stored for you and each member of your family.
- Flashlights and glow sticks: Power can go out during natural disasters, have flashlights and batteries for your flashlights. Glow sticks can also be very useful in dark situations.
- Matches, lighters, and/or flint: Prepare for a circumstance where you may need to camp outdoors. Having these items to start a fire for warmth or cooking food is ideal.
- Pocket knives and tools: while you might not know why you need these in an evacuation situation, remember that you’ll never know you need it until you need it!
- Copies of social security #, birth certificate, passport & ID: You can count on Alarm Relay to provide affordable alarm monitoring and protect your assets during a natural disaster. However, you might need to leave town or cross borders to get out of a danger zone. Have important documentation safe in your posession and ready to use if needed.
- Jug of gasoline for your car: You might be the kind of person who lets their gas tank get too low, or you might have to travel extremely far to protect yourself and your family. During a mass emergency, gas stations can become crowded or run out of gasoline. Check out this link for information on how to properly and safely store gasoline.
- 1st aid kit: The classic go-to for disaster scenarios! Make sure you have a fully stocked 1st aid kit. A working medical facility could be miles from you.
- A map: Expect your cell phone to not work in an emergency event. Have a map of your area and surrounding areas in case you find yourself lost.
- Radio: Have either a hand crank radio or a battery powered radio with extra batteries so you can tune in to AM radio stations for emergency information, evacuation routes, and sanctuary information.
While extremely stressful and tedious it’s imperative you keep it calm, cool and collected when getting yourself and your family to safety. It’s in your own hands to take the stress out of collecting emergency necessities so you can get out as soon as possible. Preparedness can save your life if you take the little bit of time to make yourself a natural disaster kit. Learn how the Rescu app from Alarm Relay can get you the fastest emergency help.
