Preparing For An Emergency

The most dreaded happens.

The fire alarm goes off and you know that it is not just a dead battery.
You hear reports of a hurricane or tornadoes heading your way, so you prepare as much as you can, but it still takes over your home.
The house has flood protection, but the rains have overtaken your home.

The unimaginable.

I recognize that there are probably many who are reading this and can say they know exactly what this feels like. If you have, please know that I speak about all of this sensitively, and know that I am not an expert. Can you even prepare yourself fully for these type of experiences? I am not so sure. I am not trying to be a debby downer or live in fear. What I am trying to do is be realistic because natural disasters happen when we least expect them. I am sure there are many who can give a testimony to this very thing.

My husband and I were caught in the middle of a tornado 2 years ago that totaled our vehicle. Thankfully, we walked away from that experience uninjured, only a few cuts from glass and I had a large egg on my leg from a hail ball. It was in that moment, that we realized that our possessions are just possessions. Some are more meaningful to us than others, but why hang on to the things that have no meaning? This led us to wanting to go through our own home, realizing that in any minute, it could be hit by a tornado. Again, we are not living in fear and becoming obsessive about a natural disaster hitting us. We do not spend our lives preparing for these moments. We just know that we can take actions now, to prevent us from having panic if something like this would occur.

So what can we do is:

PREPARE OURSELVES FOR THE “IN CASE OF…”

What does this look like and how can you prepare yourself?

1. Think about what is most important to you and even make a list. Where do you store those items? Are they your family photos? Childhood mementos? Scrapbooks?

• If I said you had 5 minutes to grab your most important belongings and everything else would be destroyed, what would you grab? Think about this question in thinking about what you find most important.

2. Within that list, decide what is irreplaceable. I have thought long and hard about this question. What would you do if they were lost in a natural disaster? If some things are irreplacable, what can you do to protect them? Buy a safe? Make copies of them?

3. Declutter: Do you have a hard time deciding what to take because your home has so much stuff? Is it so cluttered that you would have to dig deep beneath, to find what you really would want to take? Time to purge of the unnecessary so that you can live only with the necessary

4. If you knew a tornado was coming and you had 5 hours to grab what you wanted. What would be left? Let this be a reality check. Do you feel your home is too cluttered? If you had to all of a sudden pack up all of your belongings, would it take days? Does even the thought of doing that, overwhelm you? If so, I want to recommend trying to downsize your belongings.

5. Modify the list so that if there is a natural disaster or emergency and you know what you need to quickly grab if there is time. Remember that you may only have seconds. Keep the list in an appropriate place as well! Hopefully your safe will keep safe what needs to be safe…they are a good investment!

This is all in preparation of the “in case ofs…” I know this maybe isn’t the most chipper of subjects to talk about, but like I said earlier, unfortunately we don’t think about it long enough until it is too late.

Where are you at?

 

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