Throughout The Year

Throughout The Year

Keep a Hurricane Preparedness Kit packed . This assures that you will lessen the amount of things you'll have to do when the time comes. Also, items such as batteries are easier to find when everyone else isn't panicking. (Hint: Keeping batteries in the freezer does not increase their life by any significant amount, and batteries should be room temperature when used.) As a bonus, if any other event, such as a fire occurs, you'll be prepared for that as well.
Create a "take box". The take box should have everything you need to reconstruct your life in the event you evacuate and everything is lost. Passports; birth, wedding, adoption, divorce, and armed service separation certificates; copies of insurance policies; mortgage information; house and car title; large purchase receipts. You get the idea. If you have a scanner, save yourself space and heartbreak by scanning family albums and images of other keepsakes, burn those to CD and keep a copy in your take box.
Discuss and practice a disaster plan with your family. One of the most important lessons from hurricane Katrina to make sure everyone in the family knows who to contact (and how to contact them) as an out of area contact. Make sure kids know enough information so that an adult can get in touch with that person should sudden evacuation be necessary when you aren't near them. Practice this, and make other back up plans. This can be as involved as you like, but keep in mind the ages and temperaments of individuals to assure everything runs smoothly in the event you have to evacuate immediately. See Tips below for examples on how to do a run-through.
Keep in touch with friends and family that are out of the potential disaster area, and make arrangements to stay with them, in case you have to evacuate.
Have an arborist remove dead trees and dead tree limbs and evaluate the health of any trees near enough to fall on your (or your neighbor's) house.
Assure that insurance matters are kept up to date. Note: most regular home insurance does not include flood coverage in the policy, so you'll have to buy this separately.
Try not to purchase insurance during hurricane season, you may find that you have problems renewing or finding a better policy when few to no insurance companies are writing policies. Citizen's is always the last resort - and most expensive - because they are required to carry your policy.
Store food and water where you are going to be in the hurricane and keep it in a cool place so you can eat it when the hurricane approaches where you are.