Last month marked the arrival of hurricane season, it is important to prepare your family and your home for potential disaster. Hurricanes can bring incredible destruction to homes, personal belongings, and family financials. Most importantly, they pose a real risk to your family’s safety. While you can’t control the occurrence of these natural disasters, you can absolutely take agency over your family’s level of preparedness for one.
LifeSecure has created this easy-to-follow guide to make the task at hand that much easier.
Preparing your home
- Fortify your home against strong winds and heavy downpours by:
o Strapping down your roof
o Bolting entry doors
o Cleaning out your gutters
o Making any structural repairs you’ve been putting off
o Installing storm shutters
o Securing attached structures like entry canopies, sheds, porches, and decks
- Consider purchasing a generator in case the power goes out
- Make sure you understand where all the water and gas valve shut offs are
- Test sump pumps and drains
- Don’t forget about your landscaping, which is vulnerable to the destruction of a hurricane:
o Trim shrubs and trees
o Consider replacing gravel with shredded bark
o To prevent uprooting, tie down small trees and shrubs
Preparing your belongings
- Take an inventory of all your family’s possessions, complete with photos and videos of your home’s contents, to send to your insurance agent pre-disaster
- If you are worried about protecting your furniture, you can plan to elevate it to a higher floor if there’s time before the storm hits
Preparing your family
- Create an hurricane emergency kit with relevant items, including:
o Water, food and medications for at least three days
o A small amount of cash
o First aid kit
o Whistles
o Garbage bags
o Blankets
o Flashlight
o Emergency radio
o Batteries
o Copies of important documents you can’t lose or will need if you evacuate (we recommend laminating these to protect against moisture)
o Other useful emergency preparedness items found on the LifeSecure website and listed in our hurricane kit CHECKLIST
- Have an evacuation plan: Familiarize yourself with your local hurricane evacuation route and shelter locations, as well as a planned destination if you leave town
- Have a back-up plan to optimize your safety in case you don’t have time to evacuate (this often means taking shelter in the safest room in your home)
- Practice both of these plans to make sure your family knows what to do when disaster strikes
- Prepare a list of emergency contacts and store it in a place readily available and accessible to all members of your family (your emergency kit is a good place for this)
- Download the FEMA app to receive weather alerts, safety reminders and tips, an emergency checklist and up-to-date information about local shelters
- Don’t forget about Fido: Not all emergency shelters will let you bring pets, so you’ll need to make sure you locate a shelter that won’t turn your four-legged friend away
o Also consider microchipping your pet and keeping a photo of them on hand in case they get lost
Minimizing your financial losses
- Review your home insurance policy to see if it covers wind damage
o If it doesn’t, talk to your insurance agent to see if it can be added if you live in a high-risk region
- Decide if you need flood insurance, which will cover your cost in the event that hurricane rains seep into your home
- Check out the Emergency Financial First Aid Kit on the FEMA app to improve your financial preparedness in the event of a hurricane and other disasters
The sooner you start thinking about and developing your hurricane preparedness plan, the better. Take it from the experts at LifeSecure: You do not want to wait to prepare until a hurricane warning is issued. One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming the unthinkable can’t happen to their family. Better safe than sorry.
LifeSecure is a Northbrook, IL-based company that manufactures and distributes emergency preparedness products. In line with CEO David Scott’s mission to better equip the community and beyond for life-threatening situations, the company creates superior emergency and disaster survival solutions, such as kits and supplies. LifeSecure makes an ongoing study of how best to prepare for and respond to various natural and man-made disasters so that consumers can Live Life Secure. To see our full inventory, please visit https://www.lifesecure.com/, and for immediate help or questions, call us at 877-877-5522.
