Preparing for Hurricanes

Video Transcript

"Well, we encourage people to always be prepared. One of the most important things we try to get across to people is that you really need to be aware of the outside conditions and being able to monitor the weather periodically is very important. We strongly encourage all the residents in this community to purchase a NOAA weather radio, so that you can be alerted any time day or night if severe weather threatens. It doesn't have to be a hurricane. Like today, I was sitting in my office this afternoon and my weather radio went off to tell me that we have a severe thunderstorm watch from now until 10PM. Those kind of things are important. We never know when one of the severe thunderstorms might produce tornadoes so it's always important to know what the weather conditions are and if conditions are worsening, then you really need to know what to expect. We have quite a few folks in the area who live in mobile home parks and it's very important for them to understand what the weather conditions are. In the event we ask them to evacuate or if it becomes unsafe to stay in those homes, we ask them to seek shelter in a more substantial building. Knowing what the weather conditions are is very important. If you live in this community or if you visit here regularly, we encourage you to look at the evacuation routes. Know what the most prevalent routes are into and outside your community. If we issue an evacuation order, it's important for you to know several different ways for you to get from your home to other parts of the community or outside the county. Traffic builds up pretty heavily on our roads during evacuations so we need to know, you know, how to get out of the community more than just one way. We also encourage you to talk with your families. Make sure your family, who may live outside this area, knows what your plans are. If we have an evacuation, we need for them to be able to help us to locate you if you suddenly can't be located. It's important for them too, for peace of mind to know that you're safe because we're going to lose communications into and out of this community. Any time power goes out or we lose, have trees down, we're going to lose telephone and other things. So, having a way to contact relatives to let them know you're ok is very important. Know where your important documents are and how to safe-keep them. Make sure you can put your hands on insurance papers and things like that. In the event that you do have damage to your home, you're going to need to access those papers. Make sure you have, if you're on prescription medications, make sure your prescriptions are up to date and that you have adequate supplies of medicines before the storm hits. Don't let your medicine get down to a one day supply. Go ahead and get your refills done ahead of time. Make sure that you have taken provisions to take care of your animals. If you have cats or dogs or other animals, make sure you have included them in your disaster plan. That you know what you're going to do with them if you have to evacuate. And, then know where the shelters are in the community. We have five emergency shelters in this county and it's important that you know where they are and what kinds of things that you can take to the shelters. All of that information can be found on our county website. We do periodic meetings and town hall kinds of meetings where we put that information out. It's important to know those kinds of things just because you live in this environment."