When high winds and damaging flooding kicks in, you don’t want to be unprepared. The power of mother nature is never to be underestimated, and you want to have a number of plans already in place before the weather arrives. After all, the weather isn’t going to wait for you to have everything together before it drops on you.
Here are some of our top tips for keeping your home or office safe and prepared for extreme weather.
Sign up for push alerts for weather. That way, when flooding or other extreme weather occurs, you’ll be in the know. This will allow you to quickly respond to the situation accurately, while others might be scrambling to figure out what’s going on. Stay in the loop!
Talk to your family about your home plan for evacuation in the event of a flood or other extreme weather event. Where will you all meet? What are the most important things to grab? How will you secure pets and valuables before getting out of Dodge? These are questions your entire family needs to have immediate answers for.
Likewise, your office should have an emergency weather response plan. If there is an existing plan, familiarize yourself with it if you haven’t already. If there is no plan, work with your boss to get one created, or, if you are the boss, make one. The best counter to the confusion of a natural disaster is a clear, well-understood response plan.
Get a grab-box together in the event of a need for evacuation. This should include changes of clothes for the family, any important prescription medication, clean water, a radio and batteries, flashlights, blankets, flares and non-perishable food items. This box should be waterproof so that it can get rained on, or even be partially submerged, without getting the items inside wet.
By having this box together, your family will be able to quickly grab all the essentials they need in the event of a sudden evacuation.
Have backups of your important files. The biggest thing you need to know about your saves is where, and how, to back them up. If your computer or phone is destroyed by extreme weather, you need to be able to retrieve your files. A cloud backup is the way to do this.
There are numerous cloud services out there that will allow you to back up your photos, music and files in the event that your electronics are destroyed. This is one less thing to worry about when you’re responding to extreme weather. Whether it’s important files for your business or precious family photos, you don’t want to regret not making the cloud backup decision earlier.
