How to prepare for hurricane season 2021? 5 tips on how to stay safe. Take basic steps now to ensure your safety should a storm hit. Be ready for hurricane season.
How to prepare for a hurricane?
How to prepare for a hurricane?
Hurricane season 2021 is here. If you live in one of the affected areas yourself, you’ll want to prepare. If your friends and family live there, you want to help them. We’ve created this small guide to help you prepare for a hurricane. Even if you can’t control when and where hurricanes hit, you can minimize the potential damage by being prepared.
Hurricane season 2021: When and Where?
Both the Atlantic hurricane season and the Caribbean hurricane seasons start around the 22nd of May and end around the 30th of November. The peak generally happens in August & September. The countries affected by hurricanes are mostly in the Caribbean. Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti are hit often. But there are plenty of affected areas in Mexico and the United States as well.
Help your friends and family prepare for a hurricane
Do you have friends and family that live in places affected by hurricanes? There are ways you can help them prepare, even from a distance. So how do you prepare for a hurricane?
Tip 1: Keep a mobile phone charged and ready
The first step when you prepare for a hurricane is staying connected, both to the news and to each other. During a hurricane, situations can change quickly, making old information obsolete.
Landlines, both for your TV and for your phone, are known to break during a hurricane. So it’s important that you have a way to get the information you need and a way to contact friends, family or emergency services. Your mobile phone is the best tool for this. You can access the mobile site of the national weather service to get up to date weather information and alerts. Official and trusted local accounts on social media can be an important source of information as well.
Make sure that your mobile is charged, as electricity lines can be cut as well. If you have a prepaid SIM, it’s important that you keep it topped up. You can top up your prepaid plan right here on Recharge.com.
Tip 2: Prepare your home for a hurricane
Hurricane winds are strong enough to make missiles out of everyday objects. Not only that, heavy rainfall can create floods and mudslides. For those reasons it’s good to prepare your house to make sure it’s in the best shape possible to weather the storm.
The most effective basic steps you can take to prepare for a hurricane at home are: Board up your doors and windows, to protect them against flying debris. Use sandbags to keep the water out as best you can and clear out your gutters to prevent heavy rainfall from spilling over. You can find more ways to keep your house safe in this article.
Tip 3: Have an evacuation plan ready
When you prepare for a hurricane, you need to consider worst-case scenarios as well. When disaster strikes, it’s good to know how to get away quickly. Authorities might order you to leave your home, or circumstances might force you. For that reason it’s good to know the best routes out of the affected area.
Tip 4: Put an emergency kit together
When a hurricane warning is issued, people tend to run to the stores. If you want to prepare for a hurricane efficiently, make sure to always have what you need by putting an emergency kit together. This emergency kit should include: Flashlight, extra batteries, food that you don’t have to refrigerate or cook, first aid supplies, a three-day supply of drinking water and a wrench and other basic tools for repairs.
Tip 5: Keep cash or a prepaid credit card on hand
Sometimes the situation directly after a hurricane is more complicated than during the hurricane. Electricity can be cut off for a long period, which can make it hard to reach your bank account. That’s why our last tip to prepare for a hurricane has to do with the aftermath of the hurricane.
First of all, it’s handy to have cash at hand. One problem of having cash in your home is that looting and robberies are more frequent directly after a hurricane. Having a prepaid credit card, such as Openbucks, that you can use in stores and pharmacies in the US can solve this problem. It’s digital, so no luck for looters or robbers.
We hope this guide helps you prepare for hurricane season. You can find more tips and the latest news and alerts on the national weather service website.
Written by
Ravian Ruys
