This hasn't been much discussed lately, what with all the political scandals emerging, so I thought I'd start the topic off again since hurricane season is right around the corner.
I'm not by any stretch an expert on emergency preparedness and I offer only some common sense suggestions for getting your family ready to face any natural or (heaven forbid) man-made disaster that may unfold. There are a lot of Kos users who are experts and their input is most welcome in the comments.
Last year my family was one of thousands affected by the evacuation ahead of Rita (I won't even begin to touch on Katrina-it's still too painful to reassess everything that should have been done and would require its own 10-12 diaries and a better writer than myself to do it any justice). My MIL had the good sense to leave Houston early on and come to Austin with her few important possessions before the panic began. If it wasn't clear to the American public that
the country was woefully unprepared for mass evacuation scenarios by Katrina, then Rita certainly drove it home to us.
I credit her quick departure to several factors, and we as a household implemented several measures to prepare for the possibility of the storm reaching inland and taking out services as far north as central Texas.
1. Discuss your plan long before any foreseen disaster. It may seem morbid, but talking about it won't tempt fate. Agree on what form of communication you'll use--remember that cell phones are often first to go, even in severe thunderstorms. Pay phones and landlines, on the other hand, are generally reliable. Know where you'll go to use one if necessary and plan to contact your family as far ahead of these events as possible.
2. Make a list of everything you'll need to take if you have to leave home. If you do this well ahead of time you should be able to remember everything important. And, uh, try not to lose the list.:)
3. In the event no one can make contact, have a predetermined rally point. My brother and I agreed a few years ago that if anything like a terror attack happened that he and my mother would come to us (unless of course Austin was the target) because they live in a military city more likely to be hit or more likely to be in the middle of a mass mobilization. Everyone should know which home or office to go to without hesitation. Chaos induces panic, so the destination should be absolutely clear. Obviously, it would be the one place least likely to be affected in an emergency and one that is relatively easy to reach. It also helps if the rally point remains well-provisioned.
4. Know every possible route to your destination and for heaven's sake, keep maps in your car at all times! Knowing the main route to travel won't help you if everyone else in town is traveling the same way. Lots of people managed to get out of Houston in under 6 hours by taking side roads through residential areas or country roads that were little known to the urban drivers leaving the city. These were the people who keep maps in their cars. It's not something you're going to want or remember to hunt around for as you load children, pets, and personal effects in a panic to leave. Buy a $5 city map and a $12 atlas and leave them in the trunk along with a couple gallons of drinking water.
5. Create a "grab bag" or "grab box" for a quick exit if you need to leave home. Large backpacks or small fire-safe boxes are ideal, and having time to pick and locate your documents well ahead of a crisis makes it easier to organize yourself. Place your important papers such as birth and marriage certificates, passports, Social Security cards, copies of driver's licenses and insurance documents, copies of important medical records, anything at all that if you lost it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to replace. If you're using a backpack and it's blowing a gale, you may want to put the papers in zipped plastic bags before going outdoors. It also couldn't hurt to place a copy of these documents at a secondary location like your accountant's or lawyer's office, safe deposit box, or even mom's house. We keep all the photo negatives we've made over the years in our grab box and folks who are all-digital can burn copies onto disks that can easily be transported. Everyone has seen the survivors of destruction frantically searching through the remains of their homes for just one photo of a loved one long gone.
6. Keep the household supplied with essentials. This is just good for all minor contingencies as well. Bottled water, canned foods, dried foods, candles, batteries, matches sealed in zipped plastic bags, medicines and first aid supplies, baby supplies, and a battery-powered radio. Don't forget your pets need extra food as well. You may also need extra water for washing, so keep some of the 5 gallon buckets from home supply stores around, or ask you local Chinese restaurant for the 5 gallon soy sauce buckets they throw out every week. Those big cat litter buckets are great, too. We swish ours with a diluted bleach solution then fill them with fresh tap water so that a tiny bit of the bleach remains in the bucket for freshness. I found one of the buckets I filled and covered before Rita just last month and the water was as clean as when I stored it 7 months before. Apparently the low pressure of a hurricane can suck the water right out of a filled bathtub, so don't count on this as an option in storms.
7. Keep some cash on hand at all times. If services are destroyed that ATM card won't do you much good.
There're probably a hundred other good tips for an emergency, but these were some basics that shouldn't bankrupt anyone to implement. They just take a little time and planning. With the current batch of incompetents running things, I for one am certainly not counting on so much as a bottle of water from these jokers in the event of a crisis. Sadly, it seems we're on our own.