fema

According to FEMA, at their emergency preparedness website, the very first step is to Make a Plan.  For a nice short catch-all checklist for this step, go to my county’s site here.

For this step in our Prep-Along, you will need your binder as we explore:

  1. Planning for your special considerations
  2. Making a Family Communications Plan
  3. The Rest:  Getting Tech Ready, Escape Routes, Utility Shut Off, Financial Preparedness, and Safety Skills

#1  Your Special Considerations

Hopefully, you already did Step #1, Be Informed, so you should already know your local risks.  If not, take a look at this page for some local information about “Days that We Needed a Plan”.  For this step, click through the links on the left of this page about infants, seniors, and other special needs that you will need to remember while making your plan.  If you want more information, the Red Cross site addresses some of the same concerns in the links at the bottom of this page.

#2  Making a Family Communications Plan

You have several options for this step.

Go ahead and complete the ones you like; put them in your binder.

#3  The Rest of the Plan

  • Get Tech Ready:  Read through this.
  • Escape Routes:  If you used the FEMA worksheets, this will already be done.
  • Utility Shut Off:  Find out how yours work.  If it’s complicated, put instructions in your binder.
  • Financial Preparedness:  Read this page and print out and make copies of what you need.
  • Safety Skills:  If no one in your family is First Aid/CPR trained, make a plan to sign someone up for classes.

That’s a LOT, but next week, we get to the fun part…SHOPPING and GIVEAWAYS!  We’ll be doing that for most of the rest of the Prep-Along.

If you can find out this information, write it on the applicable pages for each disaster in your notebook.

Share what you found!

Come back here and post something in the comments that you didn’t know before.  On Friday, our usual linky will be shots of everyone’s progress.  Some blogs know how to let people (without blogs) put in their own photos at the end of the post.  Anyone know how to do that?