In The Shelter

Hi! I'm here with more unsolicited advice. This time I'm focusing on inclement weather preparedness. After spending some time in 'the hole' this past weekend (I live in Oklahoma), I thought I would share some advice for taking shelter. I am NOT a professional on this, but 42 years of living in Oklahoma has taught me a thing or two. 

Inside our shelter. The wall decor is as follows: Twister movie poster, Gary England, and The Wizard of Oz movie poster. You've gotta have a sense of humor about this stuff! 

My advice is as follows:

1. Wear helmets, especially if you are sheltering indoors. It doesn't matter what kind, but you need to protect your head!

2. Wear clothing that covers your body and protects your feet. Assume that the worst can happen and be prepared to step out onto broken boards, nails, glass, etc. 

3. Have a "Go Bag". Ours has a change of clothing for the entire family that meets the criteria above, bottles of water, meal bars in a ziplock bag, and back up chargers for tech. We also keep an external hard drive that is kept current on everything on our computers and in the cloud so that we will not lose any information. My husband also scanned and kept every single photo we have that was taken before we owned digital cameras. You should also include a First Aid kit. We keep one in our shelter along with batteries, extra lights, and leather gloves. If you don't have a shelter you should probably add these items to your Go Bag.

4. Put a bucket in your shelter. This part is a little gross, but necessary. If you get stuck for a long time under rubble, eventually you'll have to use the bathroom. 

5. Register your shelter with the local Emergency Management. If the worst happens they can find you immediately rather than wasting valuable time searching through everything. 

6. If you have young children, put ID bracelets on them. These do not need to be fancy but if something awful happens and you get separated from one another or you are unable to communicate with rescue teams, your child should have their name, your names, address, phone, blood type, and any health conditions or allergies available for identification and treatment. 

7. Keep a radio with you with batteries. If you lose all power and back up power to technology you can go old school and use the radio to know what is going on. 

8. Last, keep your shelter clean! No one wants to sit with creepy crawlers. Ewww. Seriously. So Gross. It doesn't take much to keep it tidy and when you clean it gives you an opportunity to check all of the moving parts and make sure that everything works correctly. 

So there you have it. My unofficial guide to storm prep. If that doesn't brighten up your day I don't know what will. Seriously, I plan on a more lighthearted subject for my next post. Carry on and remember it's just stuff. People cannot be replaced.