Hi, my name is Joseph Benoit Squires with well prepared for disaster and emergency preparedness specialists. We do like to ask the question, do you have what it takes to survive? Today we're going to talk about a very important topic that actually hits home for a lot of people. It's how to prepare for hurricane. We like to say that if you fail to plan you're planning to fail. The best thing that you can do is at least have a minor plan and action ready to roll so that you know what to do when the time comes.

Whether you need to stay home and try to ride out the storm or you need to evacuate and move somewhere safe. First things first, we do like to advocate safety first. If you're watching this video in the middle of middle of a hurricane right now, always call 911. If you're in immediate danger and need emergency help, just go ahead and you know stop what you're doing. Call 911 get someone to help you if it's an emergency. If not, and you haven't received any other instructions.

Watch this video and will tell you everything you need to know about what you need to do to survive a hurricane. The first question that most people ask is, do I stay? Or do I go? Do you want to try to ride out the storm? Is it safe to do so? Or are you better off leaving the area, getting to high ground, getting somewhere safe and coming back later to pick up the pieces, the best thing that you can do is keep checking for updates about the storm, watch TV, listen to the radio or check online.

Listen for disaster sirens and warning signals, and be prepared to leave at a moment's notice. You always hear the emergency signal interrupt on the radio or on the TV that gives you a little test to make sure it's working. Always keep that in mind. Don't Don't disregard it as a test. It always is. Sometimes it's a real deal.

It's not a test, and they're telling you that you need to evacuate. So if there is a hurricane coming if you have any indication that there's a major storm surge or as a tropical depression, go ahead and keep the radio playing. turn the TV on. keep in contact with your friends and your family and your loved ones and update them in case they're not in a situation where they can watch the TV or listen to the radio and be aware and alert And actually act upon whatever instructions they might give you. So before a hurricane, before it's coming, let's say it's still a tropical depression, hundred miles, 200 miles off the coast, they think that it might upgrade into a hurricane, you're gonna want to make sure that you have an emergency plan and practice it as much as possible, you're gonna want to build an emergency survival kit, and know your surroundings.

Always have an escape plan. Basically, you can stay alert, and stay alive. Be aware of what's going on around you. And when there is a hurricane, like I said earlier, make sure to tune in to the radio turn so that you tune into the TV station and keep in touch and know what's happening so that at a moment's notice, if it turns into a major hurricane, a category four, category five, and you need to go even though two hours ago, they said that you didn't. You need to be prepared and ready to go. First things first, you want to gather information.

If you know that you live in an evacuation area. Here's a very good map that shows you the history of hurricanes from 1851. If you know that you live in the path of one of these storms. You need to Assess your home's vulnerability to a storm surge, flooding and wind. Understand the National Weather Service Forecast products and especially the meaning of all these different radio and TV alerts. So you can actually go to their website, look in and listen to what kind of alerts they they issue for certain kinds of storms.

And what you need to be aware of, if you're in the path of one of these storms. Plan and take action. Two big steps. The biggest is planning Of course, you want to make sure that everyone in your in your house is prepared for the unexpected. Your friends and family may not be together when disaster strikes. get everybody together, take an opportunity that you can to get your friends in your family.

Teach them what they need to do in the event of emergencies. Show them where the emergency supplies are, show them how to use how to access, how to clean water. You got to practice these things so that when a disaster actually strikes, people aren't running around crazy and not knowing what to do bumping into each other and you're not left as the only one that knows what to do. You know, you can't wear all the shoes and all the hats. If an emergency or disaster strikes, and everybody's asking you and begging you and wondering, you know what to do, you're going to be overwhelmed, they're going to just carry you down, you're not going to be able to do anything, you're going to be combat ineffective. Consider how you will find each other, if you're separated.

Will you know if your children or parents are safe? So the storm strikes in the middle of the day you're at work your kids are at school, you have no idea where they are, how they're doing, what if self service goes out, think about these things. Have a plan of action of how you're going to get in contact with your friends, your family, your loved ones, and also prep them, teach them what they should do in the circumstances so that when it hits you're not the only one looking for them, they're looking for you. And you guys can meet somewhere in the middle and you have you know, like a bug out location in case of an emergency. You may have to evacuate or you may be confined to your home. What will you do if water gas, electricity or phone services are completely shut off?

If you lose all of these modern conveniences Do you have what It takes to survive. This is the basics and the essentials of any disaster preparedness kit that can help you to survive through a hurricane. So, you know, you get yourself a regular bug out bag, at least one for each member of your family. And now you can actually survive a multitude of different disasters, most specific, specifically and most importantly, a hurricane. So, this is a good thing to do. Sit down with your kids.

Find out if your school the school for your children actually has some kind of disaster, or emergency or evacuation plans. And if they don't get involved, you know, become a member of the PTA. Go to community organization meetings, and make sure that people are prepared and that your loved ones are taken care of. You want to make a supplies kit. It's gonna be basic supplies. We'll actually go over a list later in the presentation that kind of shows you what you need for each and every person to survive for about three to five days.

Put together a basic disaster supplies list. It should be on your list of things to do. Now, if you haven't already done it, get up and do it today. Start small if money is As an issue, you can buy a couple of the essential things a little bit at a time and build it up into a kit that can make, they can enable you to last one day, two days, three days, three weeks, or maybe even three years, whatever it takes. Just don't wait. Now's the time to prepare.

When the storm gets here, it's too late. Now you're going to be calling 911. And you're going to hope that someone can come and save you. Consider storage locations for different situations, there is a chance that you know, you're not going to be at home you are going to be at work, your kids will be at school, or even worse, you're in transit. So you may want to consider keeping some supplies in a different location somewhere outside of your home somewhere on higher ground where it's safe. So you know if your house is completely inundated and you have to run and leave for your life, you can go to your uncle's house, your neighbor's house or up in the woods where you camp and dig up a little stash of supplies.

You have some supplies in the trunk of your car, or you know where supplies are at a friend's or a relative's house. So it's always good to keep that in mind and consider keeping a separate location for your supplies. Another Good thing is to help communicate, community members do the same. Worst case scenario, a major disaster hits, and you are prepared. Most people have a heart and they're going to feel the need and the desire to go and help other people. But your resources can get run very dry very fast.

If you're in a community in a neighborhood where 50 people are completely unprepared, and you're the only one who's prepared, you've got enough food to last you for three days. How long will that last? 50 people, we're talking about a couple bites each, it's nothing. So the best thing for you to do is to help your community it would help you as well. What if somebody in your community has skills or has a you know, particular items and their disaster preparedness kit that you don't have, and now you need them and they can help you. It's a it's basically creating a network of like minded people to help each other to get out of something out of a disaster and emergency when they're in need.

It's often said that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. It's a lot easier for three people to dig someone out of rubble, if some house collapses, then just one so know your surroundings. Know your neighbors and build that little community that little niche and tight knit community that will help you when you need it. Here's a good example of disaster kit, we offer a lot of these, the best thing that you can get is one of these types of kits. These kits have the dehydrated food requires a little bit of water and a little bit of heat, you can technically just soak it in the water and eat on the go very lightweight. It's really hard to carry around a bunch of canned goods, or a big bag of dry beans or rice, it's very heavy.

The water that you need to cook those types of things is extreme waters heavy a gallon of water weighs almost 10 pounds. So imagine carrying around the three to five gallons of water that you need, which is almost 50 pounds, plus the food that you want to cook and all the other essentials that you have clothes, maybe even child you have to carry because they can't make it through the waters or something of that nature. It's best to have a real lightweight, tightly packed Bug Out Bag survival kit for you and maybe even enough for the rest of your family in case of emergency. The big convenience is that you can just throw this in the backyard He can take you to work with you every day. It doesn't have to be, you know, in a big storage container that you have to worry about moving around and you have to go get at home, take it with you.

That's the best thing that you can do. Develop extreme emergency plans. So there's basic emergencies that most people want to prepare for. It could just be a blackout or a brownout, but what do you do in an extreme emergency? What can you do to plan, you want to document plans for your specific risks in your neighborhood, you're going to know your neighborhood better than anybody else, you know, two blocks over this way might be a lower elevation or more prone to flooding than two blocks over this way. You might live in a neighborhood where there's a lot of unprepared people, and part of your preparation is, you know, you can't help them and you can't get them to prepare.

Part of your preparation is you have to be ready in case there's looting in case there's rioting in case there's people that are trying to break into homes because I think everybody left and they want to get what's in the house and steal what's there. So now you got to be prepared to defend yourself and defend your property. So just be situationally aware of what's going on around you where Live, always keep a good idea of, you know, travel locations where you can go what you can do to get out of town, if you have to. The best thing to have is a map, electronics fail, you can't always depend on them, you have a paper map. Now you know that if this streets flooded, you can go over this way to get over to the highway, where you need to get out of town, the best thing you can do is just go buy a local map for your area, keep it in your car, most people do, but it has kind of fallen off.

A lot of people rely on their cell phone, they pull it out and go to Google Maps and navigate with GPS and they'd be lost without an actual map. We've kind of lost touch of that. Protect yourself and your family with a family emergency plan. Include specifics about all of your health needs, your medications, your pets, anything that might be important for somebody else to know say an emergency personnel come and they don't know that your daughter is allergic to penicillin and he or she got cut by something and is getting infected. That's very important information because without it, they could give her medication and she could die. So keep that type of information.

In a safe place, in your bug out bag or with your supplies that you're going to take with you in the event of emergency, you don't want to be digging for this stuff at the last minute and not be able to find it. And here disaster comes and strikes and you're caught in the middle of a flood. Worst case scenario. Prepare for prepare your home, there's certain things that you want to do to prepare your house for a hurricane. a hurricane has a lot of different effects. The worst effects are the extreme winds and the flooding.

So there's going to be some serious flooding, there's going to be some extreme winds, the winds may cause damage to your windows and your roof and other things that you might have around your house. And the flooding, of course can come in and damage everything from the ground up as far as high as the water goes. So clear your guard out, make sure there's nothing that could blow around during the storm. You want to make sure that this stuff isn't getting washed away later on. This becomes a hazard not even to you but to your whole community. Everybody in your neighborhood could get hit by this stuff or cut by this stuff or walk on it and cut their feet and who knows what so you want to remove all this stuff from your yard Want to make sure that nothing can blow around during the storm you want to move bikes, lawn furniture, grills, propane tanks, secure anything that's dangerous or hazardous inside your house or under shelter in a garage or a shed.

Just get it out of your yard and make sure you don't lose it as well. This is protecting and securing your valuables. Another way to prepare your home has to cover up your windows and doors. I think we've all seen this. There's a lot of runs on the lumberyard. When a hurricane is coming and even tornado, people will go out and cover their their house with plywood cover up your windows.

This will help protect you from flying pieces of glass and other things that might fly in through the window, tree limbs, branches. There's all kinds of stuff that the wind is so strong that it just picks it up and throws it around my throat into your house and I throw it into you if you're walking outside. So cover your windows with plywood as much as best you can. The fact is that the majority of the injuries during a hurricane are from flying objects. So people either outside when they shouldn't be or they had no choice and they were outside and flying objects. Glass, rocks, pieces of wood furniture, who knows.

So the best thing is to secure yourself inside, secure your home so nothing can come inside from outside and harm you. There's a good example of how to plywood your windows, for the best protection that you can get. You can't get it perfect, you're not guaranteed to even protect your house with that. But you've got to at least try something that glass is very dangerous, it could cut you and it's also expensive to replace. Be ready to turn off your power. A big risk inside of flooding inside of a hurricane, especially with wind and if buildings are being collapsed or moved around is electrical appliances.

Electrocution, electrocution can also lead to different things. Say, say for instance, your wall collapses and it breaks the gas main or the gas valve and you've got electricity to sparking all around and you get a little arc. there you've got an explosion. So be prepared to turn off your power to turn off your gas. Keep all that in mind know where your breaker boxes, know which switches do what a lot of people don't know if you're a renter, and it's an apartment. It's not your property.

You might have really care, it might not occur to you that you might need to turn these things off to save not only yourself, but your appliances, these appliances can be dried out later, if you leave them on, you can cause the circuits to actually corrode. If you if you unplug them, there's no electricity in them. Later on, there's a potential that you can dry them out and salvage this stuff, it's not going to cause any kind of electrical sparks or parking, it's not going to destroy the circuits inside of the actual appliance. So be prepared to turn everything off if you need to. If you see the flooding and it starts to get above where your electricity is just go out and turn it off. It's better safe than sorry.

Be careful outside if you see down electrical wires as well. You really shouldn't be moving around during a hurricane you shouldn't be outside in the water. The water is terribly nasty, it's full of sewage in most cases. It's got all kinds of sharp, dangerous objects. There may be other people out there that are in vehicle still they're out of control. You know, a vehicle can actually hydro plane and be picked up in just three feet of water.

So three feet of water if the water is moving really fast that car can hit you and it's like getting hit by a moving vehicle. It's very dangerous. So stay off the streets stay in your house in a higher area inside your house. If there's extreme flooding, do the best you can to protect your property. But Don't risk your life to save anything inside of your house. That's where a lot of people lose their composure during an evacuation is they want to save their house.

They want to save their car in the garage or they're safe or whatever it is all their stuff in their things, but it's not worth losing your life over when they say evacuate. Don't hesitate, get your stuff and go. Fill clean water containers with drinking water in case you lose your water supply during the storm. You can also fill up your sinks and bathtubs and your water with water for washing. A big thing about this is you got to have some kind of containers to fill up. We could tell you all day fill up containers full of water so you have water but you go through your house and now you realize oh my god I don't have any containers have anything that can carries more than a small water bottle or something like that or some cups that can't be contained so that you can walk with it or so that nothing no debris is falling So invest in some three 510 gallon water containers get several of them, they got some collapsible ones, you can actually keep them in the box, throw them inside of your closet when a storm starts to hit.

And don't even wait until the storm hits. If you get warning that there may be a tropical depression there, wait maybe a storm coming off the coast. Go ahead and fill those containers up, pull them out of the closet, fill them up just in case because in the middle of the storm, power might go out, water might go out the water might become contaminated. The best thing you can do is just have that sitting there waiting in case the storm goes. If it doesn't, then that's okay. You just dump the water out collapsing again put it back in your closet, you're all good.

But if the storm does hit utilities or loss, now you have some good clean fresh water you don't have anything to worry about. Lower the storm thermostat in your refrigerator and freezer to the coolest possible temperature. This is very important. Like I said with the water not only May your water go out but the electricity very very often does go out during Hurricane not only from downed lines, but from water. That that is grounded. out the circuits on some of these trees.

Sometimes it rains so hard that the water goes down the pole in a constant flow and grounds out in the electricity in the wires grounds out and causes those to default. So if you lose electricity, you want to be sure that before when you have a chance to turn your refrigerator down to the lowest temperature, it'll freeze the sink. So if they last longer, another good thing to do is make sure that you open your fridge sparingly. That's one of my pet peeves in the house, stand there with the fridge door open, but now all the cold air. Don't do that during a storm, you very rarely ever want to open that and you want to basically keep it as close as long as possible. The storm might last two, three days.

Sometimes a storm only lasts a matter of hours. You know, a hurricane can blow through the eye hits you and then the other side blows through. By the time it's gone. Only a couple hours went by, but the aftermath could last for months. It could last for weeks for all you know. So be prepared to just keep your frigerator close keep that food as cold as possible for a couple days.

And then at the last minute if there's not going to be a restoration of it. You're gonna want to go ahead and cook whatever needs to be cooked before it rots, then you have a nice little barbecue. If possible. Keep bottles of frozen water in your freezer, it's a very good idea to take a couple of bottles, plastic bottles, perhaps a frozen water, throw them in your freezer, those can be used later. One of the greatest uses of frozen water bottles in your freezer on the fly during an emergency would be to preserve medications and things of that nature. If you have insulin or diabetic supplies that need to be kept at a low temperature, now you can just pull those water bottles out, pack them in some cloth and insulate them really good.

And your diabetes supplies are going to be safe. So you're going to be taken care of and you're going to stay healthy during an emergency. Workplace emergency plans This is one that a lot of people overlook how many people are how many jobs have you had had or how many employers you know that keep an emergency plan for their employees at the workplace. If a disaster were to strike while you're at work, which it very often does, how much food how much water how many first aid supplies are inside of the building. I mean, if you're at work right now watching this or you're going to work tomorrow, go in the in the building and look around, see if you can find, you know, a good supply and first aid supplies, something that hasn't already been used, you know, throughout the years. It's been up there on the wall for a couple years.

All the band aids are gone. All the the peroxide is used up. Look around for food and water. You have a vending machine, is that what you guys are gonna have to subsist on? Do you have a map? Do you have any kind of communications, you have a backup generator?

Does anybody have flashlights, keep these things in mind. Of course, you can alleviate a lot of those problems. If you get your bug out bag, your survival kit your backpack and just throw it in your car. When you go to work. Some people commute and they can't do that. So you might want to actually talk to your boss and have earnings discussion and conversation say hey, what if we get locked down here?

What if we're stranded here? What are we going to do? Are you going to protect us and maybe your boss will actually look into doing a lot a lot of bosses and a lot of owners of businesses are very invested in their employees and they're willing to do anything that they can to help you keep emergency supplies with you in your car. When you travel. Work. Like I said, that's a very, very good idea to do.

That's a good example of an emergency kit. That's actually one of our bigger kits that we offer. It's food storage kit gives you three weeks worth of food and all the survival supplies that you would need. have emergency plans for your family. Make sure that the schools and the daycares that your children go to have emergency plans. Most of them do.

This has been federal regulation for decades now. But some of them may have gotten lacks, they might not have you know, the most up to date technology they might not have the best things that they could sometimes the bare minimum isn't enough the federal government themselves say that the average US citizen should be able to should be prepared to sustain themselves for at least three days. Now it's three days, all that you really want is that all that your life is worth it just three days and Okay, I'm good, they're gonna come. You cannot be assured that they're going to come after three days. You can't know that on the third day. Exactly.

They're going to be there to help you and rescue you. What if you need more time than that? Sometimes Just enough is not good enough. Try to get as much as you can and invest in your life. Invest in your safety, invest in your future. Most importantly, invest in the safety and future of your children.

Find out where the nearest shelter is, and map the different routes to get there. And big important part of this in mapping the different routes to get there, if you have to leave your home is this street might be flooded, this street might be washed out, flooding isn't always the worst that can happen. Sometimes these streets get completely washed out. And they're completely impassable. So you need to know if there's another route if there's an alternate way that you can get to that destination, or know where more than one shelter is. This is important not only for you and your children, what if there's a shelter that your children will be brought to on the other side of town, but the closest shelter to you is right down the block from your job?

Can you get to the shelter with your children? Do you have to sit there and wait and wonder and find out later whether your children made it or not? So know where these different shelters are, know what the plans are, and be a part of the plan. Don't be a part of the problem be a part of the solution. pet owners should also have plans to care for their pets, you won't have extra food, you're gonna wanna have some water, you're gonna have a container, some kind of cage, or a kennel to put them in. Animals during emergencies suffer as much as we do, if not more, a lot of times are left behind.

So do whatever you can to protect your pets. And if you have to cuddle them in the upper level stairs or something like that, that keeps them safe and it keeps a rescuer safe. Because if an animal is out in the water, getting cut, getting electrocuted, getting affected, he's he's drowning, almost and he's terrified and a rescuer goes and tries to get him. In most cases, the animals gonna be terrified and he might bite and just latch on for his life, you know, not wanting to let go because he's gonna die. So keep your pets in mind, keep them in a position in a situation where they're going to survive. If you have to leave your house.

Don't lock your dog downstairs in the house during a flood. You know, think a little bit ahead as much as you can because pets are people to. Here's a good example of FEMA administrators that are going through a town and you can rely on FEMA you can go to famous website You can actually go to prepare.gov and learn a lot about preparedness and also about preparedness inside of your community because every community is different. Not every community is susceptible to hurricanes and floods. But you definitely want to have the same kind of mindset, the same situational awareness and knowledge of your area. fessing as they're doing right here, as with a big paper map, where they can map it out ahead of time, or at the last minute, at the last minute, inside of your preparedness kit, you want to be able to pull that map out and say, this is where we are, and this is where we need to be.

Let's get there. Vehicle emergency plans. This is one of the big things that I advocate, because the majority of us Americans who love to commute, we love taking our cars, we have the freedom. But what if we get stuck inside of our car or wherever we took our car in a shopping mall and a movie theater at school at work, and we don't have any of our supplies with us. You know, the best plan can get laid to waste because you're not there with whatever you plan to use. So keep up Vehicle emergency kit.

Keep a plan inside your vehicle. This extends much further than just the normal tools that you would need a flat repair kit. I'm talking about actual food, actual water and emergency blanket or real survival kit inside of your vehicle. I personally have survival kit in my house, and I have a survival kit inside of my vehicle. That way, I have twice the supplies if I need them, but I've never far from what I might need in the event of an emergency or disaster. Go ahead and check your kit.

If you've already got one make sure that nothing has been removed, nothing's expired. These are the kits that often get left behind and ignored and some things may expire on you they may dry out. They you know you may need to replay something because you took it out at some point. So check it from time to time sporadically. You definitely want to move your cars and trucks to your garage, undercover get them out of the rain and out of the wind. A big thing happens to cars inside hurricanes is not only do they get flooded or pushed around but stuff gets thrown into them.

They get a lot of body damage. They get completely destroyed and demolished. And they're unusable and it's a total loss to your insurance company. And that really really hurts you if in the middle if you're in the middle of a lease and making payments on it as a total loss, you know, you might not have gap insurance to cover that. So try to preserve your investment. If you have a boat, be aware of the marine safety if you are on or near the water most.

Doc's if you're talking about them will have you dock your boat and tie it up. Now we're gonna get into the checklist. This is the good stuff. This is the meat and potatoes of preparedness for a hurricane. What you actually need to have in your home, in your bug out bag in your vehicle or at work or school in order to survive. food and medicine.

Make sure that you have clean containers for water. Once again, we're talking about having five gallons of water, which generally lasts about three to five days per person, but you have a five gallon jug. If you've got yourself, your wife and you've got two or three children. Do you have the means to store 25 gallons of water at a moment's notice? You know filling up the bathtub isn't necessarily an answer but the bathtub isn't going to be that clean, it might have all kinds of pathogens might have all kinds of chemicals. Now you need a filter.

So if you have clean water, you see the storm coming and you have the containers ahead of time, you're able to preserve clean water right then and right there, nothing to worry about. So get some good containers so you can get water, you need at least five gallons of water per person, which should be enough for three to five days. You need a three to five day supply of food that doesn't go bad. So canned goods are good. Ironically, you know as they're described that canned goods are good. They are heavy, they carry a lot of water.

They're hard to open. You know if electricity goes out and all you have is an electric can opener, you're in trouble. Now you're sitting there with a kitchen knife, almost cutting yourself trying to open up a can. Some canned goods need to be cooked. A lot of them don't be in that they're very heavy and they do need to be prepared. You might be better off with some dehydrated foods inside of emergency kit.

But the cool thing is that a lot of us have canned goods inside of our cabinets that are ready and if you don't next time you go to the grocery store. Buy A couple extra cans of this and that because something is high in vitamins and nutrients and proteins and chili or something like that to throw in your cabinet and and use it if you need to. One big tip on canned goods, though, is make sure that you cycle your canned goods, you don't want to you know, buy this stuff like I'm talking about right now tomorrow at the grocery store, and you don't touch it for three years, and it expired. And then when an emergency gets here, you're poisoning yourself with E coli or something like that. You want to cycle your foods, use it from time to time and replace it later. So every few months when you go to the store, buy some extra food for preparedness, it's only a couple bucks.

It's a couple bucks, skip McDonald's one day, don't spend the 699 on a super happy meal or something like that. And invest in a couple of cans of of you know really good food that you can use to save your family in the future if you need to. If you have infants or you're expecting so you're expecting you definitely want to have baby food and formula on hand and extra supply of these types of things to make sure that your littlest most precious ones are taken care of Any prescription medicines that you might have or need, it doesn't it doesn't necessarily have to be a prescription that you have right now. If you anticipate or if you know that you suffer from back pain, don't be down to your last little bit of aspirin. And you know, now there's an emergency where you really need to exert yourself.

You need to lift weight and you need to carry stuff you need to help people and you can't, because your leg is hurting too bad. You've got water on the knee or something, make sure that you have the medications a stockpile of these medications that you might need if you live in a disaster area. Here's a good example of the dehydrated foods I was talking about. We actually have buckets, we call them grab and go buckets. They're safe. They have a 25 year shelf life.

Dehydrated food, you only need to add water, boiling water to it a very small amount and it creates nutrient packed meals for whole families. The cool thing about these is they are waterproof and they will float. So in a flood. You can actually catch these things floating on the street sometimes and there you go. You've got your food. You don't have to worry about it getting you know soaked or sinking in the water.

Not being able to find it, these things will float to the top even in your garage. If that's where you're storing them. You definitely want to have a couple of safety items in your preparedness kit. Some of our bug out bags actually come with not only all the food that you'll need, but also the majority of the safety items and tools. But if you don't have a bug out bag, you're trying to put your own together, make sure you get a comprehensive list, you want a really good first aid kit with instructions on how to use it. If you don't know how to do CPR, or somebody in your house doesn't know CP doesn't know how to do CPR, you want those instructions inside of it.

So find a kit that has a good instruction booklet, or invest in a nice first aid book that will instruct you and or your loved ones on how to save somebody's life in the event of emergency. A fire extinguisher is definitely a plus a lot of people don't have a fire extinguisher. I don't even know where it is you don't have easy access to it. This is something you might also want to keep in your vehicle. They have some very small fire extinguishers that are that are portable, they're very easy to use, and it's a good thing to have if you ever need it. I definitely recommend keeping a fire extinguisher in your vehicle for other reasons.

Car fires is a very real thing to happen. So you know, we're dealing with a combustion engine, there's explosions, there's gasoline, there's fire. So it's something you always want to have inside your vehicle and definitely have inside your home. You want a battery powered battery powered radio. You can also get a hand crank radio, solar powered radio, something that's going to enable you to listen to the radio without plugging into the electrical grid. So you can hear weather alert, you can hear am FM.

You can hear NOAA if possible. So the best thing to get is am FM weather radio that's battery powered slash hand crank. Some of the better ones nowadays actually have flashlights built in. So you get a radio hand crank power source, and you get a flashlight. Next thing of course, is flashlights, make sure you have some flashlights that are very, very durable. You know, you might want to expend a little bit of extra money getting a flashlight that's going to be waterproof something it's not just going to fall down.

I mean, you guys have seen all the scary movies where they get into a dark cord or and orden they're in trouble or maybe it's a disaster movie and they can't see or they need to know where to go and also in the flashlight stops working and they're like dang flashlight What's going on? Get a flashlight that is going to work. It's going to be durable. You know Ray vac has some great unbreakable flashlights you can get, you can throw them on the ground, you can throw them in the middle of a pool, they're going to be safe. They're they're waterproof up to a certain extent. So in a flood, they're not just going to die out on you.

And they're LEDs they last a long time when just a couple little batteries. Best thing you can do is invest in a very, very good flashlight. get extra batteries for flashlights and extra batteries. For some of your other appliances. If you're relying on just a battery powered radio, get extra batteries for that. Make sure you know which batteries are needed for each device.

Not all of them are going to take as they're going to take triple A's. Some of you will take a C battery instead of triple A's or a nine volt Just be aware and get extra batteries keep them on hand. For all the different devices you're going to use in an emergency. You're going to want a sleeping bag and or extra blankets at the very very least if you don't want to get a sleeping bag, have some extra blankets puts it aside that you can use in an emergency. The problem with extra blankets and sleeping bags in many cases. As in a flood in a hurricane is they do become soaked and bogged down and they're just going to SAP the heat right out of you.

So what we offer and actually comes in all of our survival kits, is the emergency blankets. You've all seen the mylar, you know, it looks like a big piece of tinfoil that you're wrapping around yourself. It basically reflects 98.5% of your body heat back to you. It's waterproof, it's durable, it's folding to a very, very small package, you can throw a couple of them in a backpack and keep a couple people warm. In the case of an emergency, probably the best thing you can get. Make sure that you have supplies to make drinking water safe.

So you may run out of water. You might not have time to fill up your your jugs, so you have 50 gallons worth of jugs, but you start filling them up. When the storms come in and boom the water goes out you only have two gallons. You want to be able to make your water safe. So you need some kind of purification tablets you want. They're usually iodine tablets, some chlorine bleach, some hypo redox.

You want the ability to have UV filters if necessary. Or an actual water filtration system. We have a water bottle that has a filter built into it. So you fill it up with water, put the cap on and you can drink straight out of it it filters as you drink. Here's a good example of a survival kit. This one does have the dust mask eye protection, couple survival blankets, this is a two person kit.

So everything that you would need for the bare minimal survival for two people, it's not a food kit. So you need to have your own separate food storage or canned foods or something like that. Bare bare minimum. What you want to have if you live in one of these areas is something like this. You don't want to rely on the first aid kit that's been in your house for last three years and who knows what's actually in it when you need it. You want to go digging around for stuff you want everything in one central location, the bug out bag that you can take and you can go couple personnel personal care products.

Most people would not think that hygiene is such a big issue or or taking care of yourself is such a big issue but it is during an emergency you can go days and days and days without fresh water without warm water to take a bath to clean yourself that can lead to infections and staph infections and yeast infections and all kinds of nasty bacteria will start driving us on top of your body. Not only that, but you won't be very pleasant to be around. So, as far as eating is concerned, you're going to want to have some hand sanitizer. The most important thing for us in everyday life is to wash your hands before you eat so that you don't get any foodborne illnesses inside of you. during an emergency, it's going to be hard to see a doctor, you're going to be living on limited supplies, you're not going to have that much water, you're not going to have that much food, you're going to be very, very stressed out your immune system is going to be weak, it's going to be at risk.

You don't want to introduce a bunch of nasty bacteria into your body. While you're already stressed out and you're already at risk. There's no point in putting yourself in a worse and worse condition than you already are. You want wet cleaning cloths. He's like baby wipes. This is in case you don't have any warm water, any fresh water that you can actually use to clean yourself or take a shower or a bath.

These really come in handy. You can wash yourself off really easy and just throw them away. Everybody in your family can use them. You don't need a bath. You don't need a tub or anything like that. And it allows you to conserve water so that you can use that for drinking and eating.

You want some good antibacterial soap today. Based Of course, some tampons and pads other feminine products in case so you know one of the females inside of your family or yourself if you're a female do need those things are an emergency you don't want them to be you know in your bathroom that got flooded and you know all three drawers are completely wiped out. You want these inside of your emergency kit so that when you do grab it and go you're not like oh my god, I forgot we got to go back to the house or we can't go back to the house and now you're just in trouble. You definitely want an excess of diapers. So diapers is a good thing to keep around if you have kids, but you want to throw some in your car, keep some with you in your in your bug out bag if you're going to need them and keep enough he a lot of people actually suggest that you don't keep the disposable diapers, but you keep keep the cloth diapers because they are cleanable and they are reusable.

In the event of a long term disaster or an emergency. You know you can't rely on something that's disposable ever nothing disposable can be relied on in a long emergency. So when not longer, so you need something that's tried and true throughout time, like cloth diapers Here's a good example of one of our biggest survival kits. This is a really cool one. It comes with a shovel comes with everything you could possibly need, including enough food to last for a couple weeks. It comes in a big duffel bag, you want to get something like this, you may prefer a backpack, but the big duffel bag does come in handy because you're able to not only keep everything that's here and supplied hand crank radios, am FM, weather radio flashlight, the whole nine yards.

But you can add to this there's room to add more stuff if you need that. This is where you can put some clothes, you can put extra shoes, you could put your extra medications, so you're not just relying on the basic first aid kit. So some things to think about during the storm. That was all before the storm. That's how you prepare for the storm. So let's say the storm is here.

It's already hit. It's hailing and raining outside. You can hear the wind it's almost tearing the roof off the floodwaters starting to come in. Some things you want to keep in mind is you want to stay indoors during the hurricane and away from windows and glass doors. The number one injury that people sustained During a hurricane is from flying objects. It may be beautiful, it may be interesting, you may want to take a selfie with the hurricane, you might want to take a video of it and put it on YouTube.

That's the worst thing you could possibly do. You're gonna get injured you're gonna get hurt. Imagine a piece of that flying glass going into your eye. You want to avoid any windows, any doors, find somewhere safe clothes, all the interior doors secure embrace all external doors just like you brace the outside windows with plywood. You're gonna want to brace the inside doors so that they're not pushed in most doors nowadays, open in, keep the Curtains and Blinds close. This will help if the glass does break, you know kind of diminish and dissipate the effects of the glass hits, hopefully hits the blinds or the curtains and doesn't come into the house and hit you or doesn't litter the floor where you may be walking later or your children or your pets may be walking later in the dark.

Try to find your way around and you're walking on a bunch of glass that scattered for 10 feet. It'll keep that scattered close to the walls. Don't be fooled if there's a lull in the storm. You know a big storm surge My head, it seems like all hell is breaking loose outside, the roofs almost getting ripped off, and then all sudden it stops and it's quiet outside. A lot of people are tempted to say, Oh, look at this and you know the sun actually shines, and they go outside and the rear end of the storm because you're in the eye, the end of the storm hits them worse than the front of the storm did. That's where a lot of people get caught up, they get injured or they get killed.

Winds will pick up again, always consider that stay inside until you're informed either by people outside emergency personnel, the radio or the TV that it's safe to go outside. Just go ahead and hunker down and ride the whole storm out. Here's a good example of a hurricane. And how massive it is. We've talked before about hurricanes can actually reach 600 miles wide. So a whole area 600 miles wide, might be affected by this hurricane.

And that little eye is right in the center. So you can begin a storm for four minutes. 30 minutes, 40 minutes an hour, two hours and you think that that was the worst of it and then it's gone and the eye opens up You don't even know that the worst is yet to come. during a storm, make sure you take refuge in a small interior room, try to find a closet, try to find a hallway on the lowest level. Of course, if flooding starts, you're going to want to get out of the water lie on the floor under a table or another sturdy object. This is during the worst of the winds not during the flooding.

In the worst of the winds. There's a risk of collapse that's equal almost to an earthquake in some cases or a tornado, that the walls might be pushed in and might collapse on you. So you want to be under something sturdy and something safe so that you're not crushed underneath the building. Don't go outside yet. Like I said the eye of the storm may appear calm, but higher winds are short to follow. Some of the winds are so bad they uproot trees.

So you definitely don't want to be out there. It's not safe, it can pick you up and blow you away. But the worst thing is it'll probably blow things into you with extreme force. That's how most people are injured. After the storm, you want to be safe inside. So storms past you've heard that it's okay to go outside or you haven't heard this okay.

Okay to go outside but you know, the storm has passed. Be safe inside. You never want to go in and start plugging in all your electronic devices. You don't want to if your TV went out or the power went out, or you unplugged it for safety sake, you don't want to plug it in now, not if it got wet. You want to make sure that if it's still plugged in your pole, or you turn the power off a domain and then unplug your devices, and wait for an electrician to check these devices to make sure that they're safe before using. So if there was water and your TV got wet, and there's a little bit of wetness all around that area.

Don't just go right to the plug and try to unplug it. Sometimes it can arc and spark can actually get you burn you or even electrocute you, it can start a fire. You want to go to the main flip the breaker box would you should have already done during a storm we talked about earlier turn off the power. But if you didn't go turn off the power then unplug the device. If it's wet at all, don't turn it on. Just wait for somebody or until you get a new one to actually use.

If the power is out, use flashlights instead of candles. You know what to use candles for a couple of main reasons. You're probably already boarded in your house completely enclosed. There's not a lot of airflow. You don't want to get carbon monoxide Common dioxide poisoning. You don't wanna use any kind of propane heaters in the house, you don't want to barbecue in the house, you want to use the oven to stay warm.

If the gas line is still intact, those things can cause carbon dioxide poisoning, and you can actually fall asleep and never wake up. So you want to avoid that as much as possible. If you do have candles, you keep them away from anything that can catch on fire and you never leave a candle on attended. Not even for a minute, things can happen, candles can actually shift and move. Things can fall into a candle you might forget about it all together. Never leave it unattended.

Here's a good example of some flood damage inside of a kitchen. So if your lower level was flooded, and you're hiding upstairs, don't go down. They're treading into this water. This water might be electric, there might be some kind of chemicals in the water. chemicals can spill out of your sink out of neighboring areas out of industrial facilities in a neighborhood. You can actually get chemical burns you can get chemical poisoning from inside of that water.

Stay out of this water at any cost. Usually it's full of sewage and bacteria and the slide is cut. The slide is opening in your skin. can invite that in and you'll get an infection and it can prove deadly, especially if you're in an emergency. And there's no hospital nearby. There's no antibiotics readily available.

Stay away from that water. Be safe outside. Like I said, Keep away from the flood water. Always follow warnings about flooded roads. You may have a truck that's got a six inch lift, and you've got a Hemi in it, and you think I'm gonna make it through there. That's not necessarily true.

Like I mentioned before, just a couple of feet of water can completely hydroplane a vehicle and it will float it'll pick you up and it'll move you at high speeds and put you out of commission. You can waterlog your engine to where it doesn't work anymore, and now you're stranded. So if there's any kind of information or warning about a flooded road, go around it. Don't try to pass through it ever. drive around flood water, not through it and maybe deeper than you think if you have to be in or near floodwater wear a life jacket especially if the water is rising. Do you have a life jacket?

Do you live near the coastline? Is that something that you have in your house or that you have readily available to you most people don't. When's the last time you saw a life jacket when you went to the to the lake you know when you're Writing a jetski it's something that you might want to have with you in the event of a flood. So you will have inflatable boats or rafts that they can use. They're not always reliable. A lot of times during a hurricane or a flood inside of the flood water, there's all kinds of stuff sitting around you know, an inflatable raft is just not going to make it it's going to be pot that's going to be cut and you're in you're going to sink it's not going to get very far something like a kayak or a canoe is much better.

Keep in mind that floodwater often contains germs. If you touch it, be sure to wash your hands with soap and water. If you don't have soap or water use some kind of alcohol based wipe. A lot of people do have the hand sanitizer that comes in handy. They even have hand sanitizer spray. Nowadays, you can just spray it on your hands to destroy that bacteria and keep yourself safe.

I would definitely recommend washing your hands completely with an antibacterial soap but if you don't have access to that rely on a hand sanitizer if possible. The best bet is just to avoid that water all together. Stay away from it avoided like the plague because it is it's plagued. It's got nasty bacteria nasty viruses in it. It's some really, really nasty stuff. After the storm, you're gonna want to stay away from power lines and dangerous materials.

Like I said, there's going to be stuff floating around that's going to cut you that's going to possibly infect you or poison you contaminate your bloodstream with all kinds of nasty stuff. You could be electrocuted. powerlines can remain active while they're in the water, there'll be a certain surge area where you could be walking and you don't see the power line is right there. And you get within 10 feet of it, and now you're shocked. It can shock you bad enough that you fall down in the water and you're not able to resuscitate yourself, you're not able to get up and you could drown in just a few inches of water from being electrocuted bad enough. Watch out for power lines overhead.

Make sure that you're watching those power lines because they can come down on you. So if you're walking, be aware of what you're walking under and try to avoid walking under things that may fall down. There's still gonna be a lot of unsettled ground around that you know that there's going to be mudslides and landslides or maybe sinkholes that open up. Be aware that the best thing to do if you're if you survived and you're safe at the end of the storm is to stay where you are and wait for help to arrive. Protect yourself with the right gear. You definitely want a breathing mask.

Before, during and even after the storm even if everything's wet and flooded. Now there's going to be a bunch of mixed materials that are all together there's going to be all kinds of nasty mold and mildew and bacteria that's going to build up in and around your house, at your work at your place of work even in your car. So you want to be able to protect your lungs and your body from breathing in these nasty dangerous materials. If you're near dangerous materials, keep a respirator keep gloves. Dust inside the damaged buildings could contain substances like lead it's bestest cement, and mold. If you type something harmful, wash it off your skin right away.

Get help if you're not sure how to handle harmful materials. So you definitely want to be testing your environment looking for strange smells or strange, you know chemical spills inside of the water and avoid them at all cost. After the storm beware of looters and home invasions, we saw with Hurricane Katrina, as soon as the people left, there were people that did decide to stay or didn't decide to stay, had couldn't leave and had to stay. There was a lot of looting, there was a lot of home invasions that went on. Be aware of that. Somebody might be trying to come into your house to steal something, and they don't even know that you're there.

And now you're in the middle of harm's way, because they came in and you spook them. It's an intense situation. So make your presence known or at least be aware of your surroundings and let people know that you're there. Let people know that you're, you're not away if, if you're hiding in your house, you know, just don't hide with a radio up full blast or go to sleep and not be aware of what's going on around you. Stay alert, stay alive. Protect yourself from animals and pests.

Like I mentioned earlier, it does come into our heart to go and help our neighbors. It does come into our heart to go and help stray animals or lost animals or animals that are floating down the street. But, you know, be very careful. You can walk up to a dog or a cat and they've just been through they just been traumatize terribly, and you go out and try to pick them up and they may bite you, they may scratch you, it may not be that they're welcoming you as this great savior that you are, you may want to avoid them and just leave them for animal control or use some kind of protective measures. A big thing about PES is after a huge flood, you're going to see an influx of waterborne pests and waterborne diseases, mosquitoes are going to be everywhere, have some bug spray on hand and maybe even inside of your survival kit that you can use to protect yourself from these mosquitoes and all the different blood borne illnesses that they can transmit.

Floods can bring not only mosquitoes, but a variety of bugs, including flies, you'll want. The best way you can protect yourself from these things is to wear long sleeve clothes, full pants, socks, cover all your skin when you're going outside if possible to keep these things off you. So that is how you can actually prepare for prepare ahead of time and during an after a hurricane so that you can survive. We invite you to watch any of our other videos on EMP. What you might need to survive for three days, three weeks in three years and we thank you for watching