National Preparedness Month: What’s Your Disaster Checklist

September is National Preparedness month, and if you’re like most people, keeping your house and your family secure is a top priority. However, knowing exactly how to keep your family and home safe isn’t exactly easy, and you do need to do some legwork to figure it out.

While what you need to safeguard your home greatly depends on the area you live in and what natural disasters occur in your area, there are some general guidelines that can help everyone prepare for a natural disaster.

Use this guide to help you make sure your family is prepared, no matter where you are or what happens. Otherwise, you could be in store for some serious consequences.

Know Your Area
Before you can begin to prepare your home and family for a real emergency, you need to understand what disasters could occur in your area. For example, areas where hurricanes are common may require supplies to help you board up windows. An area where a flood is common will require you to keep sandbags on hand.

However, those supplies may not do much for an area where natural disasters like earthquakes – which can’t really be predicted – are the most common. In those areas, kits that help you simply stay healthy after a disaster are essential.

Make a Plan
The next step in preparing your home and family for disasters is relatively simple. You need to devise a thorough plan of escape in the case of a disaster – if leaving the home or going to a safer area of the home is helpful.

For example, in a tornado, you’ll want to head to your basement where, ideally, your entire tornado supplies are waiting for you. It’s also where you’ll be the safest and away from potential shattering glass.

In the case of an earthquake, you may not want to be at the lowest part of your house because of structural damage and the potential for your home to literally cave in on top of you. In that case, you’ll want to be on the ground floor and protected from breaking glass or falling items.

Whatever type of disaster you are preparing for, make sure you have a plan of where your family will go and meet when a disaster strikes. You don’t want family members separated during a disaster under any circumstances

Prepare Your Emergency Kit
An emergency kit can make the difference between living through a natural disaster or the grim alternative. In the case of a very severe disaster, you might even have to rely on your emergency kit to stay alive for an extended period of time.

Use the list below to help you make sure you have everything you need in your emergency kit. If you’re unsure of how much to have of a particular item, remember that it’s always better to have too much than too little when it comes to emergency preparedness. You don’t know how long you’ll have to rely on your emergency supplies.

• Water. Water is essential, and dehydration can quickly prove to be deadly; you want to have about a gallon of water per person per day in your emergency reserves. That means that each person should have at least seven gallons of water in reserve in case of a natural disaster. It might sound like a lot, but not having it is much worse.

• Non-perishable food. Think of items like canned beans, fruit, vegetables and dried meats.

• Flashlight. One flashlight per person, with extra batteries for each.

• A radio with extra batteries. Any urgent information could be conveyed.

• Medicines in surplus. Any prescription medication that a member of your family needs should have a one-week supply in reserve.

• Cash on hand. Remember, some emergencies are simple things like a family member ending up in jail. Without cash on hand, you won’t be able to get them a bail bond and they will have to stay until their hearing.

Disasters are rarely predictable, and few businesses are truly ready for the full extent and nature of a disaster when it hits. While recovery is never an easy task, there are a few vital steps you can take before and after an occurrence of the disaster to help make your insurance claim—which is, after all, the basis for your financial recovery. For more information about bail bonds, contact Signature Bail Bonds. We can assist if you need us for any kind of legal claim against natural calamities. We can help with all of your bail bonds needs and keep you out of jail in the case of an emergency.