Hurricane Emergency Supplies

Prepare Now, so You and Your Family Survive Any Emergency

When it comes to hurricane emergency supplies, I've been reading this great book called The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley, about how people react to disasters, including Hurricane Katrina.

She made an interesting point, especially considering she's a reporter for TIME MAGAZINE. The media misled us a lot on the people in New Orleans. Not all of them were simply too poor or stupid to get out. Many of them were elderly. Elderly people are set in their ways and don't wish to have their days disrupted.

Hurricane Emergency Supplies Can Also Be Used for Tornadoes, Norwesters, and Typhoons

But in this case it's more complicated. New Orleans has had other hurricanes, It was hit by Hurricane Betsy in 1965. But people just rode it out and survived. Elderly people remembered that. They assumed they would survive Katrina just as they had Betsy forty years before. Younger people didn't remember Betsy, and so were were more frightened of Katrina than the older people.

And in 1969, Hurricane Camille hit New Orleans, and it was also a Category 5 storm. In 2005 the elderly remembered riding out Camille. What was different about Katrina? (Well, for one thing, thanks to development, there were a lot less wetlands protecting the city in 2005 than in 1969.)

And we didn't hear about Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The example in her book was an elderly man who did give in and evacuate with his adult children that year, and it was a mess.

So a large percentage of Katrina's victims were the elderly. People who remembered surviving Betsy and Camille, and who suffered through an inconvenient, unnecessary evacuation for Ivan.

She also tells an interesting story about a small community in Louisiana who didn't lose anybody to the hurricane, except their community itself. They all knew each other. They had a long tradition of packing everybody and their supplies onto a few boats, tying them together and then taking everybody out of town to safety, together.

Unfortunately, their area of the coast has not recovered from Hurricane Katrina, and so they didn't have houses to return to. They're now scattered around the country, and living in FEMA trailers. Thanks to the community values, they survived as individuals, but they still lost their community.

Everybody Close to the Ocean Should Keep Hurricane Emergency Supplies

The video at the bottom of this page is a good on regarding emergency supplies for hurricanes, coming from a fireman in Florida, where they must know a lot about this subject.

One other tip from the above book, is if you're driving, don't try to drive through water. Us men are more likely to try it than women, and that costs people their lives. High water can stall out your car. I know -- it's happened to me, though fortunately the water was after the story (Typhoon Zelda) rather than during it. But my girlfriend tried to drive through high way during Typhoon Ondoy in 2009, and it badly damaged her car, and cost me a lot of money, and put her and the kids with her at risk.

You can't load the car up with more food and water than it can hold, but you do need to take some. 72 hour emergency kits are good. So it bottled water, so you know it's clean. And take first aid supplies, diapers for babies and medicines for people who need them. And money and ATM cards.

But as Katrina demonstrated, the essential thing is to get out fast. I know people who drove all the way to stay with friends in St Louis. So make sure you have hurricane emergency supplies on hand at all times.