How to Prepare for a Hurricane

So you’ve been following the news, and keeping up with our hurricane tracker, learning about when and where the current storms are going to make landfall. You’re in the path of the storm and are wondering about the basics of preparing for a hurricane and where to get more hurricane information. In this article, we’ll take you through some basics of hurricane safety and show you how to prepare for a hurricane, things you can do to ensure staying safe in a hurricane, and stress the importance of hurricane preparedness plans and emergency preparedness kits.

Hurricane Preparedness Plan and Hurricane Preparedness Checklist

Some basic questions you need to ask yourself as you begin to prepare for a hurricane are:

• Do I live in a vulnerable spot on this storm surge interactive risk map?
• Do I have back ups of all medications I need?
• Do I have people with disabilities and other access and functional needs who may need special assistance in an evacuation?
• Do I have pets (they need to evacuate too)?
• Are all of my important documents in a safe, dry place?
• Do I know how to safely transport personal oxygen tanks? Strange question, but during Rita evacuations in Texas, a bus carrying elderly victims burned, killing 24. Needless to say, this became an important issue in the preparedness discourse.

If you plan on taking the “hunker down” approach to hurricane preparedness, you’ll need enough food, water and supplies to last you and your family at bare minimum, for 72 hours. Let me repeat, this is a minimum amount of supplies. I’d plan for longer. After Hurricane Ike, there were some parts of the Houston area that were without power for up to three weeks (more in some places). Watch this video for a look at what you’ll need.

Fema has a great recommended supplies list on their website. They stress the following to ensure disaster preparedness in the event of any contingency:

• Build a kit: get all of your survival gear together.
• Make a plan: know where to go and when to go.
• Be informed: know you’re risk and follow developments.
• Get involved: be active in your and your community’s disaster preparedness

Ensure that you and your family are prepared, and avoid making one of our 5 deadliest hurricane mistakes. Get all of the hurricane information you can to ensure that you will be staying safe during a hurricane. For more up to date information on hurricane preparedness, visit our Hurricane Faq page, and learn about other hurricane dangers in Hurricane Spawned Tornadoes.

Also, be sure to check Fema’s community and state information site for local updates and alerts.