Friday, October 14, 2016

Five on Friday

I thought for my Five on Friday I would do lessons we learned from Hurricane Matthew.


1.   When you stock up on water in advance of a storm, double what you think you need because even after the storm is over chances are it will be awhile before you have fresh water again.  We were lucky enough to be able to use the water from our pool to flush our toilets and boil to wash dishes with, otherwise life would have been even harder.


2.  When we left our house we took important financial papers with us, but we should have taken household insurance papers too.  As it turned out all were safe, but it would have been harder if we couldn't access our insurance policies.


3.  Have a car charger for your cell phone.  We didn't and eventually the battery died.  When we got home the folks across the street loaned me one.  As soon as we had electricity and internet I ordered one from Amazon.  During the storm and the first day after even though we were at a friend's house 40 miles inland cell phone service was spotty, we could text and receive calls, but not call out.


4.  Make sure you have a battery operated radio and lots of batteries to operate it.  We did, but didn't take it with us to our friend's house and he had no batteries for his radio.  We were dependent on car radios.

5.  Have cash.  When stores and gas stations finally started operating they only took cash, no credit cards or debit cards.


That's my five.  Do visit the other bloggers at Amy's Love Made My Home.







21 comments:

  1. Janet such a helpful list for emergencies. I am hoping that you will never need it again. Have a restful weekend.

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  2. Good advice! Hope you don't need this list again for a long time:)

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  3. Oh dear how awful, it sounds like you've had a dreadful time.

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  4. Thanks for the tips♥ Glad you are okay♥

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  5. I can't imagine being in your position. I'so glad you survived and got through the challenges. Well done.

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  6. Certainly good advice - but let's hope you will not need it!

    All the best Jan

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  7. I'm sorry to read that you had to evacuate your home and the list is a good eye opener for all. We experience tornados in late spring where I live and the devastation can be bad from them too.
    Glad you are safe and starting your clean up.

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  8. So glad you survived the storm! I appreciate your checklist. Thanks for sharing. We are supposed to have a major wind storm tomorrow. So far a big branch from our neighbor's house has fallen on our mutual fence...concerning but thankfully not life-threatening.

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  9. Thank you for sharing some very important advice. Earlier this month, we had earth quake warnings and I put together an emergency earthquake kit. You'll never know when you will need it. I'm so happy that you are safe and that your home itself escaped serious injury. Enjoy your weekend and don't work too hard. Pat xx

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  10. Great advice here. We don't have hurricanes, but we do have an earthquake kit with many of the same things. Glad you are okay and hope that things get back to normal quickly.

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  11. Very good tips ! We have never been in such a situation here in Brussels, but you never know with the climate changes ! We often have very strong winds we never had before !

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  12. It's one of those things where you're wise after the event. Let's hope you never need this advice again but at least you'll be well prepared if you do.

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  13. excellent post, thanks for sharing what you've learned, it certainly never hurts to be prepared

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  14. Yes! We learn so much after a hurricane. I remember many of your five from IKE about 8 years ago. I'm sure you've helped many with this list -- good to know in any disaster.

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  15. I'm so glad the your house was spared. The list is good advice for so many exceptional emergencies. We here in the UK are so used to having everything working, it's sometimes good to be shaken out of complacency even if we don't have earthquakes and hurricanes. We did have one once back in 1987 and it blew a garden wall down. We had no idea!

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  16. So glad you are safe and your home was undamaged. It must have been a very frightening experience. Let's hope you never have to take those precautions in the future.

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  17. Very important things to remember, especially living in Florida and where you are.

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  18. All great pointers. Hubby is a proponent of being prepared for natural disasters, etc. He is insistent on a certain amount of cash being available "just in case." When we had a dog, I had to remember to make sure there was "dedicated" water for him. We could drink other things like juice or soft drinks, but he exclusively had to have water available.

    betty

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  19. Good advice! We lucked out during this hurricane - our power didn't even flicker.

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