Is Your Family Prepared? June is Home Safety Month

June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

June is home safety month and is a good time to look for changes and improvements to make your home safer and to prepare for unexpected emergencies.

Planning ahead can keep you safe if a flood, fire, flu pandemic, terrorist attack, or other public health emergency strikes. Home Safety Month is a perfect time to prepare yourself and your family for an emergency.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that each family get an emergency kit, make a family emergency plan, and be informed of the emergency resources available in their community. You can take these steps to prepare for an emergency:

  • Do a walk-through of your home.
  • Check your smoke alarms, child safety locks, and first aid supplies.
  • Get an emergency supply kit.
  • Make a family emergency plan.
  • Stay informed.

Here are a few simple items you can gather today to prepare for an
emergency:

  • At least 3 gallons of water for each member of your family
  • Food for at least 3 days—choose foods that don’t need a
  • refrigerator, like canned fruit, energy bars, peanut butter, and
  • crackers
  • Prescription medicines that you take every day, like heart or
  • diabetes medicine
  • A first aid kit to treat cuts, burns, and other injuries

Learn more about keeping your home and family safe:

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Animal Disaster Preparedness Day – May 14

June 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Animal Emergency PreparednessMay 14th is Animal Disaster Preparedness Day. In emergencies, animals are often forgotten completely yet they are as affected as the human beings. Many animal owners and lovers have no idea how to prepare their animals for an emergency.

More animals than human beings are lost during an emergency and disaster because of lack of preparation. An important part of animal preparedness that has recently been financed and introduced in many states is the animal and tertiary emergency response unit. These units have been equipped to deal with all emergency situations that may arise and affect animals. The units also conduct training sessions through which animal owners and lovers can learn the exact steps to take to ensure that their animals survive any form of emergency. It is important to note that the steps taken to ensure animals survive a disaster vary from one species to another and it is therefore important to attend these trainings and interact with the professionals.

Secondly you need to ensure that you are aware of the location of your nearest well-equipped emergency treatment and veterinary center. Many people only begin looking for the best veterinary clinic when they have an animal in distress. If you live in an area where the animal rescue unit is quite far, you can register to the animal health state office for a closer emergency and treatment center for your animals.

As you prepare and adjust your home to keep you safe during a disaster, you can also ensure that such adjustments are suitable for sheltering any pets you may have.

One organization that helps educate community leaders and provides assistance during disasters is Noah’s Wish. Their mission is to save animals during disasters with our rescue and recovery services and to mitigate the impact of disasters on animals through our educational outreach programs. Learn more at Noah’s Wish.info

Filed Under: Animal Observances, General Observances Tagged With: , , , , , ,

April is Disaster Preparedness Month

April 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

Disaster Preparedness MonthApril is Disaster Preparedness Month and is a good time to make a disaster plan, gather supplies, and get prepared for a wide range of potential disasters. The recent earthquakes and tsunami in Japan remind us of how quickly a natural disaster can strike and why we should prepare ourselves ahead of time.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

There are real benefits to being prepared.

  • Being prepared can reduce fear, anxiety, and losses that accompany disasters. Communities, families, and individuals should know what to do in the event of a fire and where to seek shelter during a tornado. They should be ready to evacuate their homes and take refuge in public shelters and know how to care for their basic medical needs.
  • People also can reduce the impact of disasters (flood proofing, elevating a home or moving a home out of harm’s way, and securing items that could shake loose in an earthquake) and sometimes avoid the danger completely.

The need to prepare is real.

  • Disasters disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives every year. Each disaster has lasting effects, both to people and property.
  • If a disaster occurs in your community, local government and disaster-relief organizations will try to help you, but you need to be ready as well. Local responders may not be able to reach you immediately, or they may need to focus their efforts elsewhere.
  • You should know how to respond to severe weather or any disaster that could occur in your area – hurricanes, earthquakes, extreme cold, flooding, or terrorism.
  • You should also be ready to be self-sufficient for at least three days. This may mean providing for your own shelter, first aid, food, water, and sanitation. View checklist and also the list at FEMA.

For a list of contacts in your local area, along with a list of potential natural disasters, visit the map at Ready.gov.

One of our favorite Survival Blogs – Blog to Survive.

Read more about disaster preparedness:

 

 

Photo from Flickr, creative commons license by digitalsadhu

 

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