Do You Have a Plan?

As tornado season gears up again, it’s time to talk about your disaster plan. What happens if you lose power for days, your house floods, or worse yet, it is destroyed by a tornado? What do you have planned in case of an emergency?

As the saying goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Take some time today to prepare your home, family, business, and church. Here are some practical tips:

1. Take pictures of all of your belongings for potential insurance claims of property loss or damage. Go room to room and take photographs of each wall and every drawer’s contents. Make sure to store these photographs on a cloud storage, such as iCloud or Dropbox, if possible. Also scan and upload important documents and insurance paperwork.

2. Get a water-proof, fire-proof safe to store your important documents and valuables. Label this safe with your name and contact information.

3. Create an emergency preparedness kit. The Red Cross’s website and mobile apps have some great suggestions for the contents of these kits.

4. Have a plan ready for what you would do in case of an emergency. Talk about this plan as a family, business, or church so that everyone is on the same page and knows what to do.

5. Review your insurance policies and make any necessary updates. Too often we meet people who have lost out on thousands of dollars in insurance money because their policies were not up-to-date.

So many times we hear things like, “We never thought it could happen to us.” We meet people all the time who regret not having a disaster plan in place. They regret not taking the time to prepare for the worse case scenario. We can honestly say we’ve never met anyone who regretted taking the time to plan for disaster. 

More practical tips are available on Ready.gov. As our partners and friends, we care about your safety and well-being. Take some time to prepare today so that you’ll be ready in case of an emergency.