The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security advertise September as National Preparedness Month. Many people may say that you really need to be prepared if you think you are going to rely on FEMA for help. So get yourself prepared if disaster or an emergency strikes. If you have kids (and since you are reading this blog you probably do), there is a greater need to be prepared and you need more supplies.
Putting together emergency bins is fun. Again, Ready.gov has put together a useful checklist of supplies for your emergency bin. www.ready.gov/america/getakit. We put ours together two years ago, but we need to update them. My kids are older now and need different things.
The second step is just putting together some basic emergency information. Ready.gov has put together this interactive emergency information tool to help you: .
The third step is customizing your plan for the emergencies more likely to affect you. Hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and floods are more likely for some places than others. Of course you want to geek it up a bit and think about some of the emergencies that FEMA has overlooked. (We already know that they miss hurricanes.) But what about rampaging zombie hordes, alien invasions and yeti stampedes?
FEMA has also put together a separate Ready Kids: www.ready.gov/kids. It features games and puzzles as well as age-appropriate, step-by-step instructions on what kids can to be better prepared for emergencies. Yes, the web site looks what you would expect from a government bureaucracy when it is trying to make something that would interest kids. Not at all interesting for kids. But the thought is there: get your kids involved and let them know what to do if things go bad. They can also let you know what else they might need. For my kids, that means we need to grab Blue Dog and Pink Blanket before we go anywhere.
So spend some family time this month getting your family ready to deal with an emergency.
