This is likely the most important decision you will make in a disaster. The life of your family and animals will depend on this decision. Trusting your emergency professionals when they say to evacuate is an important step. There may have been false alarms in the past but when you are dealing with deadly disasters like as a mudslide or blizzard, you should be willing to do anything to keep safe.
Evacuation Logistics
If you delay a decision to evacuate you still need to have everything ready as if you were planning to leave. This becomes more important if you have farm animals, livestock, pets and immobile people to care for. Every step not taken prior to the event starting is one more thing you have to do when under great stress. Bad things always happen faster than expected during a disaster. You need to plan for a lack of time available to evacuate. If you think loading an immobile family member will take ten minutes, double it. If connecting the horse trailer will take 10 minutes, double it. Do as many little things as you can in preparation of evacuating and hope you don’t need to. You definitely want to have the car packed with everyone’s GO Bag so you can jump in and drive off as quickly as possible.
A day traveling Puerto Rico to interview disaster survivors of Hurricane Maria. The people of rural Puerto Rico are without power in many areas. The process of running power poles to remote areas is a time consuming and expensive one. Installation is the same as before so the situation could repeat itself next season.
Understanding basic disaster communication can relieve some of the stress and frustration. It also eliminates a false sense of hope so survivors can work with realistic tools available. Being prepared has a huge impact on life after a natural disaster is long gone.
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