It is getting close to that time of the year again. Where a nice, sunny day can suddenly turn to a dark sky with a big twister coming down from the sky above. It is a scary site, to be near a tornado. One thing is for sure, no one should take tornado season lightly. There are things we can do now, so we can keep our families safe from the severe weather dangers, most of us will have to face in the months ahead.
There is a lot of things a homeowner can do, to prepare for the severe weather ahead. Most know the power will go out at some point, so a good crank radio is a good investment to get. Especially one that comes with a flashlight and a cell phone battery charger. Most of these hand-crank radios have a ton of different features that come with them, so people can be prepared for various emergencies. Another thing you can never have enough of with bad storms, is the wax candles. I know most homes have a candle somewhere in the house, but it may be hard to find with no lights on. So be sure you know where you keep the candles and try to stock them in different places around your house. Since candles are pretty cheap, this is an emergency item everyone should have on hand. I know one candle special online had 125 small candles for less than 10 dollars. You can’t beat that price!
Most folks probably don’t have a first aid kit or an emergency kit in their homes. I know its becoming more popular to keep these emergency kits in our cars, but each household should have one too. These emergency kits come in a variety of sizes and you can get them as big or small as you want. Looking around online is probably your best bet, to find the perfect emergency kit for you and your family.
Here is a short list of the most common supplies needed:
*First Aid Medicines
*Lights
*Cigarette Lighter
*Radio
*Batteries
*Cell Phone Charger
*Working Cell Phone
*Clothes
*Blankets
*Tarps and Umbrellas
*Shoes
I know shoes might not seem like a big deal, but it is. It is best to go ahead and put your shoes on first, before a bad storm ever gets to your neighborhood. Having shoes on, will be a life saver, if you need to get out and walk around or help others in the aftermath of these severe storms.
If you loose part of your roof, the insurance companies want you to cover it up, with one of those blue tarps. If any further damage occurs, because rain leaked in, then in most cases, the insurance places will NOT pay for water damages. They take care of the wind damage, but they expect you to protect your home from the water and rain falling down outside.
Hopefully when bad weather strikes us, it is during the daytime. Most of the time it is during the daylight hours. Since the heating of the day, is what produces the main energy for these thunderstorms. However, they do go over us during the nights too. This is one reason, why most will want to have a severe weather radio siren around, so they can be alerted to these overnight disasters. I hope you never have to face a tornado at night. I think it is hard enough to survive them during the day and it is much worse at night. Be sure to prepare your kits and your emergency plans, like it was at night, so you can prepare for the worse and hope for the best. If you take a little time now, to prepare for these awful spring time storms, we can all come out of them alive. No one should ever have to lose their life in a thunderstorm or a neighborhood tornado.
Chris, I liht of the devistation and deaths that we are experincing, I think you should delete or elaberate on your original post of this photo that it is NOT the tornado that happpened here on Monday. It is causing fear and I just think you should rectify that. I also think your site is very informative and wonderful on the preparadness for Torando , very informative. But to let people go on believing and scaring family members out of town that havn’t seen there one families since this happened, please make a statement or something. Said out of love, Cindy Biggerstaff
Hi Cindy, where are you located? If you notice the date of this blog post, it was written on January 26th. So if your area had a tornado this past Monday (Feb. 27th); then you can see my blog post isn’t meant to talk about any specific tornado. The first pic is a bit scary and it certainly caught my attention. Hopefully it will catch other folks attention and they will take a few minutes to read my tornado advice. If this post helps 1 person out in the next 25 years, I think it was worth my time. Let’s prepare for the worse and hope for the best. Being scared is better than being brave with some of these spring time storms (IMO). Thanks for the nice words and the reply, but I did not mean to act like I was talking about your area nor did I really think I would put any fear in anyone.
Great post! Good planning is an essential survival skill! Keep the pictures Chris – they tell an IMPORTANT visual story. Geez Cindy… in publishing we call that “stock photo” and not “fear mongering.”
Someone is using that photo on facebook claiming it is the one that hit West Liberty, KY March 2.
Barry, my wife showed that pic to me. She saw it on FB. When I saw the date of the Blog, I thot it was deja vu all over again.
Chris, great Post! I would suggest to double up on emergency kits and store them in different places. Most of the same supplies apply to an earthquake or even flash flood. I’m in So cent Ky (Hopkinsville). So I know all 3 of these events can happen to me.