Unofficial Hurricane Prep List

Hurricane preparation should be customized to meet your family’s needs. Here is My Unofficial Hurricane Prep List.

Hurricanes Are a Part of Life. Be Prepared.

My life has been affected by hurricanes. They are a part of life where I am from: both big hurricanes that make the news and little hurricanes that no one really remembers later.

You may be excited when you were a kid because school was canceled for an upcoming storm. You may also be excited as an adult because work was canceled. Hurricane parties are a tradition for some folks, but when you are a parent, you are keenly aware that there are people whose lives depend on you, especially foster parents.

The storm can bring dangerous weather conditions like high winds or flooding which can put lives in danger. Prepare for that.Don’t disregard it.

But I am here to tell you, dear reader, that more often the worst part about dodging a close call hurricane threat is the power outage and school closures. You don’t even have to live close to where the storm made landfall to have a high risk of power outages. No one likes losing precious electricity, especially mamas of littles.

Hurricane Prep: Lessons Learned

When preparing for a storm, this is not my first rodeo.  We have done it well. We have done it poorly. With littles. With big kids. With false alarms, with school closed, with foster kids, with extended family evacuating.

Because I recently got my life UBER organized, I have compiled a list of things to do every time there is a storm with a name. Every time. Standard Operating Procedure.

You have to be prepared. Not because you are worried necessarily, but because everyone loses their mind! It gets crazy, and you want to beat the crazies to the store.

It’s often a false alarm, and that prep was for nothing. That is the nature of it. But what if it wasn’t? What if your life ended up depending on this prep?

While that sounds dramatic, let’s ask another more realistic question.

What if the steps do you take to prepare can make the difference between a good day and a bad day?

A good hurricane day is a chill day at home with bad weather outside. A bad hurricane day becomes a hectic prison of children and stress. And no milk and bread. 

Don’t Take My Word for It. Do Your Own Research. Make Your List.

Credible sources like the Red Cross and the Weather Channel provide people with preparation tips for weather disasters, but I will provide you with my customized hurricane preparation list. It is customized to meet my family’s needs, which includes five children, from teenagers to infants.  

Planning Ahead for a False Alarm

When shopping for emergency preparation, you want to be sure your purchase has an alternative use. If not, think ahead about a plan to donate.

After Hurricane Katrina, we over-prepared, and then it all expired. We ended up throwing a lot away.

The key is not to get so much that it goes bad before you can use it up and do not get stuff you would not use anyway.

The List

1. Buy snack foods. Examples of foods that will keep: Vienna sausage (fan favorite of our new foster kids), tuna, tamales, spaghetti meatballs, trail mix, snack crackers, ravioli, chocolate (the chocolate is important because evacuating or not, hurricanes are stressful and chocolate is good) water, Gatorade, beef jerky, granola bars, (you may want to hide some of this in the car so the kids don’t eat it all before the storm even arrives)
2. Bottled Water is most important. Don’t skimp on volume. You can always donate the extra to the marching band boosters. In addition to buying water, we fill all the travel water bottles and pitchers with water from the tap.
3. Take inventory of your flashlights and know the battery situation. What size and how many. Each year, for the first storm, I buy fresh batteries for the flashlight box and transfer last year’s batteries to the kids-are-free-to-use-these box. Also, make sure there are plenty of kid flashlights and adult flashlights. Ensure your children know which flashlights are FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY and which are free to use to hunt for a missing Lego under the bed or play flashlight tag at sleepovers. For example, in our house, we stock up on D for the Maglight and AA/ AAA for the little flashlights we keep around for backyard shenanigans, camping, and Halloween. 
4. Charge the Dewalt radio battery and the spare battery. 
5. Write down the reliable local radio stations. Keep that list in the Emergency grab-and-go folder and on a Post-it beside the radio.
6. Wash all the laundry. There’s not much worse than having no clean towels, no power/ AC, or an excess of dirty laundry stinking up the hall, which is also our safe space for tornado warnings. Reframe: It’s not only a tornado warning. It’s a fun hall hangout party as well.
7. Fill cars with gas. Because there will be people evacuating, there may be lines at the pumps or some pumps running out. Go ahead and fill up your vehicles, and if you think you need to, fill the lawnmower gas cans.
8. Get cash. When the power is out, credit card machines do not work, and banks will be closed. ATM machines may also be impacted.
9. Cook food. If you have anything in your freezer or fridge that you don’t want to go to waste, COOK IT. Now is also the time to use leftovers and as much fresh produce and meat and stuff. It will all go bad if power is lost
10. Clean your bathroom. You might want to clean the bathroom so it won’t stink. Our bathroom is another safe space for tornado warnings. Clean the bathroom. This is so important. The likelihood of a tornado destroying your house is (not zero, but) small. The likelihood of enduring an hour or more at a time in your safe space with your children while you wait it out is VERY HIGH. It is not productive to yell at teenage boys about their aim while fearing for your safety during a natural disaster. 
11. Gather chargers and at least one power strip for hanging out in the hall, obsessively updating the weather app, and texting friends. Using electronics passes the time, but you don’t want to use up the battery if you lose power.
12. Keep phones charged. See above
13. Check your med supply. Check all anxiety, ADHD, allergy, and birth control are in full supply. Nuff said. Maybe stock up on seasonal allergy meds and Benadryl, too. The pollen count was through the roof after the past few storms, and it was handy to be prepared. There is a Katrina baby boom. It’s a thing. Usually, when the emergency preparation experts talk about checking your medication, they are talking about heart meds and diabetes and such. Those are important. However, those might not be relevant to your season of life if you have little kids.
14. Make a grab-and-go folder with vital info. I’m working on a blog post about this in the future. Essentially, it is written down phone numbers of important people, copies of insurance cards, a copy of the custody letter of the foster children in your care, and a long-distance phone card. It is important stuff we take for granted because it is on our phone or the internet, but we might need it if the power goes out, our phone dies, or the cell service is unavailable.
    
    
    BONUS: Bathe the dog and the children too. The children will cry for the dog when they think the tornado is coming, and if he stinks, you will be irritated.
    

So there you have it. The unofficial way to be prepared for your next hurricane. 

Go to the Red Cross site below for a real emergency preparation list. https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/types-of-emergencies/hurricane.html