13 Tips to Help Prepare Your Family For an Emergency/Disaster!

Before I go any further, I just want to assure you that while I don’t necessarily buy into the whole world ending this year thing, I also don’t think it’s a bad idea to make sure that you and your family are prepared in the event of an emergency!

Since I do definitely support being proactive about preparing your home, family and self in the event of an emergency I thought I’d share a few tips with all of you from NASA Senior Engineer Dr. Arthur Bradley, author of “Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family” on how you and your family can be better prepared in case of an emergency!

 

About “Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family”:

Written with a family-friendly style that’s easy to read and understand, Dr. Bradley delivers must-have information for personal and family safety without scaring anyone.

Published via the CreateSpace self-publishing, print on-demand platform, the 450-page “Handbook” is a guide for families everywhere, and is filled with lots of useful details that everyone can use, from evacuating their home and their general area during a disaster, to purifying water, storing food and protecting themselves and their property.

In preparing the book, Dr. Bradley, a former paratrooper and college professor with a PhD in engineering, consulted “every reference and preparedness plan” available, collected information from various agencies, conducted searches and tests and referenced 260 sources for his book.  Important to him was helping families pull together a plan that works for them, including special needs for people with disabilities and the elderly as well as providing details on how to create an effective network (ie, teaming up with neighbors and friends to help one another survive the disaster).  He also provides websites for useful information and exercises families can practice to help them prepare for the unexpected emergency.

 

Thirteen Basic Disaster Preparedness Tips

1. Start paying attention. Get a weather radio. Monitor local and national events. Be more aware of your surroundings and things that may affect your family. Stay Alert = Stay Alive!

2. Make a simple list of dangers that you are most likely to face, many of which are dependent on where you live. Next, assess the shortages or hardships that these dangers might cause, such as loss of electricity, water contamination, or inability to travel the roadways. Finally, make a few basic preparations to mitigate the effects of those hardships (perhaps keeping a generator in your garage or installing a water purifier).

3. Stock up on consumables that might end up in short supply: food, water, candles, batteries, generator fuel, ammunition, diapers, etc.

4. Shore up your shelter. Take time to inspect your dwelling to make sure it is in good repair and capable of protecting your family.

5. Plan your possible evacuation. Identify where you will go, at least two ways to get there, and what supplies or valuables you will take with you.

6. Put together a small emergency kit for your automobile.

7. Review your insurance policies and adjust or supplement them to have an adequate safety net in place.

8. Have ready a properly-sized backup heating system (if appropriate to climate).

9. Establish an emergency fund that can be quickly accessed when a financial hardship occurs.

10. Learn first aid, and put together a well-stocked family kit.

11. Maintain a minimum 30-day supply of important medications and medical supplies.

12. Create a network of like-minded individuals committed to working together to survive dangerous events.

13. Consider the special needs of those within your household, including children, the elderly, those with disabilities, and pets.

Source: Arthur T. Bradley,PhD, Author of “Handbook to Practical Disaster Preparedness for the Family” (CreateSpace)

You can Check out Dr. Bradley's Book on Amazon!

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It Never Hurts To Be Prepared!

As we inch closer to 2012 I ‘m starting to get a little nervous.  I know that there’s someone, somewhere who thinks that the world is going to end nearly every other day, but there seem to be quite a lot of someone’s who think that December 2012 is D Day and that makes this momma just a little bit on edge!
I remember when everyone thought that Y2K was going to be the end of the world and I remember my mother going crazy stockpiling water and canned food and me thinking that she was a few cards short of a deck.  I remember watching my mom, with a smirk on my face, as she lectured me about survival food supplies and making sure that we had enough medicine to weather the storm that she was sure was coming to do us in.  And  I definitely remember thinking to myself that there wasn’t nearly enough anxiety pills in the world to calm her down if the stuff did hit the fan.  My sister and I would laugh as mom continued to stockpile water and she just kept telling us, “You won’t be laughing when we’re the only ones with clean water!” and we would of course, laugh some more. 

Fast forward 11 years and now I am the one freaking out.  Sure I haven’t stockpiled any water yet, but I have began thinking about becoming a little more prepared in case of a disaster.  While I don’t necessarily believe that the world will end next December I don’t think that being prepared would be such a bad thing and I’ve even began doing some research online about disaster preparedness and what I should have—just in case.  There are some great websites that offer all kinds of tips and checklists so that you can be as prepared as possible in the event of an emergency; there are even places like BuyEmergencyFoods.com, where you can buy freeze dried food to add to your disaster preparedness kits. 

So while I’m still on the fence about the whole world ending next year thing I do think that planning for a disaster is just a smart thing for us all to do!  Are you prepared? 

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