By Tony Beach
Hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes happen all the time. These natural displays of earthly might shake our cities and towns, often leave us feeling hopeless in the aftermath. Natural disasters are a part of life, and have been for as long as humans have roamed the planet. But modern innovation can save you the heartache and pain of lost belongings and loved ones while you rebuild your home and life after the tremors or flooding have subsided.
Science and the social dynamics of coastal, urban clustering suggest that natural disasters are going to remain a prevalent and increasing part of our daily lives. But research also paints a brilliant picture of the human condition when faced with these challenges – we overwhelmingly gel as a unit in order to overcome the difficulties and challenges that the Earth provides us. With the help of a strategy, your family members can make recovery far simpler.
Make a plan and review it regularly.
The first step in disaster preparedness is always making a plan. If you live in Los Angeles, this means reviewing guidelines for fire and earthquake response. For Louisiana or Florida residents, your primary area of concern is hurricanes and floods. Many of these challenges arrive seasonally — for instance, hurricane season runs from late June through to the end of October or early November, with the bulk of storms arriving in the Caribbean in the peak months of August and September. Your plan must take a few alternatives into consideration. The most pressing matter is whether to stay in your home during an event or leave it in order to find shelter elsewhere. This means keeping your car gassed up, cash in an emergency fund to pay for food and hotels, and the ability to grab the essential supplies you will need in a hurry — including clothes.
Whether you decide to stay or leave, you will need to secure your home and belongings. Sandbags and window boarding work great for hurricanes. If you are leaving a fire zone, you need to remove flammable material like curtains or furniture from the edges of the room. Push everything that could contribute to the spread inside your home to the center of each room.
Protect your belongings.
After you have developed plans for either riding out the natural disaster or leaving your home behind, it’s time to consider protecting your belongings, especially valuable items. Adding jewelry insurance to your homeowners insurance policy or purchasing it as a stand-alone policy is a great way to ensure that destruction or theft doesn’t leave you without your home and your valuables. Insurance is easy to add on engagement rings and other valuable jewelry and provides more peace of mind as you scramble to protect the objects with high sentimental value. Jewelry insurance will cover any type of jewelry — bracelets, earring and any new jewelry — so definitely consider adding the value of the jewelry in your home to your renters insurance policy, even if it costs a small additional monthly fee.
Picture storage is another essential consideration. Pictures are significantly vulnerable, no matter the natural threat your home faces. Both fire and water can damage your home’s cherished images. Digital storage of backup copies is incredibly easy to do now with cloud storage, photo storage services, and the prevalence of thumb drives. Creating backups of these valuable memories and snapshots of those gone will allow you to take stock of the things that are absolutely essential as you work to prepare for a threat to your home and family. Find a great option for unlimited photo storage so that you have all of your valuable, prime photos, even if the original photos get swept away in a flood. You son’t regret putting unlimited photos on the cloud. Just knowing that your photo storage is taken care of will give you peace of mind.
These are simple solutions that provide powerful support in these times of uncertainty. Natural disasters are incredibly unpredictable and often we are left with images of a single home standing amid a littered neighborhood of destruction. There is no way to know whether your home will be spared or ruined in the chaos. Coming up with an evacuation plan for the most severe weather systems and securing your valuable belongings with innovative and relatively simple solutions will ensure that your family makes it through the worst of it each time.
