Prepare for Disaster

You help your patients prepare for their futures. Are you proactively preparing yourself and your family for disaster?  

I know how important this is. A few weeks before Katrina hit, I lost my home and my possessions in a house fire.  


Here are a few tips I learned:
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1. Invest in the right insurance with the right carrier. Yes, you can find bargain insurance. It may not be such a bargain when losses occur.
2. Take a video of the possessions of the house.  I kept receipts for large purchases.  However, I lost my entire medical library with a value of many thousands of dollars.  If I had only taken a picture of the bookshelves so I didn’t have to recreate the library from memory! 
3. Store digital copies of important documents: passports, insurance cards, medical records, a list of medication, car titles, photos and other treasures. I was working on a book manuscript when the fire struck, and was grateful that I backed it up every day. 
4. Create a family plan and put an out-of-area emergency contact in their smart phones.  Label the contact ICE— “In case of emergency.”
5. Stockpile provisions: food and water for the entire family, including pets, prescriptions and first aid, flashlights, radios,  cash and a way to recharge computers/phones.  The car battery can be a surrogate power source. 
6. Keep at least a half of tank of gas in the car at all times. Some natural disasters do not have warning signs.
7. Consider investing in a back-up generator.  
8. Invest in fire extinguishers, carbon monoxide alarms and smoke alarms.  Know how to turn off the water and the gas into the house. 
9. Imagine what your life would be like if overnight you did not have ANYTHING.  No favorite mug or slippers, sewing kit, pen and paper. In the event of a loss, accept help!  
10. Remember that kids respond to losses differently than adults.  As my parenting educator put it, trauma is like “putting your kid’s brain through the blender.”  Recovery from a disaster teaches kids that we are resilient.

I hope that you never need this advice; however, should disaster strike, you and your family will be glad you prepared.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those in the path of Irma. 

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