In less than a month it’ll be that time of year again, Hurricane Season.
Those of us who call the Gulf Coast home are well aware of the dangers posed from living down here, so before those dangers arrive it’s time to get prepared.
While the weather remains hurricane free sit down and come up with your game plan to follow so if a hurricane does threaten you can move quickly and efficiently.
This may not necessarily be just a plan for evacuating, but should include what items need to come inside and how long does it take to bring all of them indoors.
Do you have boards ready to go up? How long does it take to board up your house? Do you have a generator, and if you do do you have enough gas to run it?
These are the kinds of questions that should be answered in May so when August rolls around you don’t have to waste valuable time doing things you could have already done.
Last year Hurricane Michael went from “an area of interest” to one of the nation’s most intense hurricanes in history over a few days.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time to prep your family, prep your house, and in some cases evacuate early enough that you aren’t stranded on a roadway.
Keep in mind that landfall is just the first part of the equation with services of all kinds stretched thin planning for the aftermath is just as important.
You’ll need water, food, batteries, flashlights, medicine and enough of all those things to last for several days to a week, and any important documentation needs to be ready to grab or in something waterproof and safe.
There’s so many different things to think about when a hurricane is coming that just the basics are overwhelming, and you don’t want to add to that stress by being ill prepared.
A great resource to use for helping create a plan and put together a preparedness kit is: getagameplan.org.
We’ve got 24 days now to get a plan ready, and the state often does a tax exempt weekend for hurricane kits so take advantage of those resources.
Hopefully we won’t need to use our plans or our kits, but Acadiana has been incredibly lucky over the last several years so no one should be complacent.
