Unique Advice To Prepare for a Hurricane/Tropical Storm by Gabriel Pagan.

A few days ago before a storm hit early hours of the morning I stood in line at the supermarket getting my much needed items . I was observing the items inside the shopping carts of a few people and some items where probably not your best choice to survive a hurricane.

Most of the people where buying key essentials in preparation for Tropical Storm Earl (which at the moment of this writing is a Category 4 Hurricane) that was approaching the beautiful Island of Puerto Rico.

Some of the items I saw where canned goods (to be more specific Salchichas Carmela, it am curious on why people favor this specific brand, given that I am  vegetarian you will not see that in my key items list). The most abundant item was liquor, in my opinion if you need to run out to get liquor before a hurricane you might need to evaluate how much of a priority beer and liquor is in your life.

Since I am vegetarian I don’t need to worry about freezing meats or any other items that need to be frozen. During a storm there might be a power outage and this might cause some issues. Most of what I buy, can last a few days without refrigeration and without spoiling.

As I was thinking of these items I saw a link shared by @lucymfel ,on a client site for our company, which was a great post on advice and a unique list to prepare for a hurricane.

Our friend Gabriel Pagan wrote in a blog post.

Unusual Hurricane Advice

You are all aware about the usual canned food/ fresh water hurricane season advice. No need to go there. Plenty of websites have that info. I would like to mention a few other tips that people don’t like to mention but are worth keeping in mind. Duh, obvious stuff people forget.

• Keep some cash around. We are all used to ATMs but post hurricane, its possible the ATM network is down so keep a few bucks just in case.
• Limit alcohol intake. Hangover post hurricane is stupid an dangerous. I can’t understand why the number 1 item sold before a hurricane hits is beer. Its dangerous, don’t do it.
• Backup scans of important documents online. Keep them in the cloud. All those CDs, USB drives are worth crap if they are sitting next to your PC when the wind blows the PC to the next town. I cannot emphasize this enough, keep mission critical documents in the cloud.
• So you have spare batteries for radio etc, what about the cellphone? Keep a spare battery or at least a charger that works from the car. Chances are you don’t have a landline, you need that cell.
• Buy 2000 Flushes or something similar for every toilet in your house. Don’t laugh, really. There’s no water service, you don’t know when its coming back, you want to flush that toilet every time you go? No, most people adopt an if its yellow, let it mellow policy. So using 2000 flushes keeps thing a bit more hygienic.
• Cut your grass real short and keep the trees trim. You ain’t gonna have many chances to cut the grass in heavy raining season and the grass gets out of control quickly so when you do, keep it short. Its not just aesthetics, keeps bugs away.
• For God’s sake, the roof of your house is not a good place to keep junk. Clean it.

My thanks to Gabriel Pagan for sharing this practical list. I personally follow most of this advice in the following way:

Cash on Hand

I make sure I have enough cash before the emergency for basic needs.

I don’t Drink During an Emergency

I drink alcohol a few times a year and it has to be special occasion.

Plenty of Batteries

I always have spare batteries to the Point I might not even use them in years.

Gabriel’s  advice will make me from now on:

Backup Items

• I need to backup items to the cloud or an offsite location. I am currently using MobileMe from Apple which allows me to access all this data from my Mac, Ipad, Ipod Touch, and on the web.

Buy some 2000 Flushes

• The 2000 flushes Idea is great will try to find it.

Keeping the Grass Shorter

• I need to keep the Grass Shorter. I will have to follow up on our gardener to come in when scheduled.

Other things I do:

• I have a few lanterns that are solar powered and I make sure they are charged all the time. Same reason why I might not use my batteries that much.
• I make sure I charge all my rechargeable batteries even my jump starter kit which provides me with energy for any device I might need. I also have an extra battery that powers my usb devices.
• Since I run a remote business I do have an mobile hotspot (Overdrive from Sprint) which allows me to have access to the internet as long as the Mobile Networks are up. I would only use this device for emergency purposes since you want to keep the networks free so emergencies can be communicated.

What do you think about Gabriel Pagan and my recommendations.

It would be great if you can add other ideas to the List in the comments area!

What do you do to prepare for a Hurricane or other type of Emergency?

External Related Post

Unusual hurricane advice