subject: 3 Guidelines For Family Emergency Preparedness [print this page] When you watch the horrifying news of another earthquake, hurricane, or tsunami throughout the world, you may find yourself wondering what you would do if a natural disaster hit your local community. None of us wants it to happen, but the best way to survive if it does it to have to be ready ahead of time in case something does happen. The Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) recommends a three-pronged approach to family emergency preparedness:
*Get a Kit
*Make a Plan
*Stay Informed
1. Get a Kit
In order to put together an effective kit, you need to think about each individual in your family and put together a personal emergency preparedness kit that is customized for each member of the family. This is important because the needs of each person are different. For instance, entertainment for a toddler will be far different than for a child who is six and just beginning to read.
When starting to put together your kit, first identify two important things:
*Basic supplies for immediate survival
*Supplies for surviving for three days, in other words, a 72-hour kit
According to FEMA, a good disaster preparedness list for your 72-hour kit includes:
*Water (a gallon per person per day)
*Food (appropriate for all ages and medical needs)
The next step in family or personal emergency preparedness is to make a plan. This includes such things as:
*Identifying an emergency contact who lives out of town
*Ensuring each person can get in touch with the emergency contact person by having access to something like a cell phone, pre-paid phone card, or quarters for a pay phone
*Arranging a meeting place and meeting instructions
*Determining what to do if each person cannot meet up with the others
3. Stay Informed
As the news verifies each day, disasters can strike any time and any place. Moreover, disasters don't always stay in high-risk locations For instance, most commonly think of earthquakes hitting California or the West Coast, not Washington, D.C. as was the case in the Fall of 2011.
Staying informed certainly involves paying attention to what the local disaster response teams are telling you to do. But, it is more than that. It involves educating you and your family about potential disasters ahead of time, knowing the proper course of action to take, even rehearsing what to do when it happens, and becoming aware of state and local initiatives for readiness and action.
by: Art Gib
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