When you hear about unexpected emergencies, what comes into your mind is hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, explosions, and other calamities with large-scale destruction. However, an emergency comprises other minor home misfortunes, such as a tree falling on your house, a home-fire outbreak, gas leakage, etc. Moreover, whether small or big, every emergency needs to be handled with much preparedness to save your property and life. Below are tips to follow to ensure you are adequately prepared for an unexpected emergency.

1. Establish an Emergency Fund

Natural disasters and home emergencies come abruptly with no warning signs. Unexpected emergencies require you to have the cash to cater for any expenses once it occurs. Such expenses include temporary accommodations, food, medicines, fuel, etc.

However, don’t save your emergency fund in commercial banks and online financial institutions. Technology may fail in the occurrence of a disaster. Therefore, accessing money held in electronic platforms, including ATMs, may be impossible. To be safe, store your emergency funds in cash at a secure place.

2. Get Training on First Aid and Emergency Handling

Whenever an unexpected emergency occurs, the life of your family members, friends, and yours are at risk. To save a life, you should be conversant with first aid and emergency handling. Therefore, knowing how to offer first aid to injured persons is the first level of defense against disasters.

To avoid being bystanders during emergencies, family members should enroll in formal training on handling emergencies and performing first aid procedures. Due to the busy work schedule, limited time, and COVID-19 preventive measures, you may opt to enroll for formal training with AED CPR Certification Online. The online courses offer both children and adults extensive training on first aid procedures, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, choking, automated external defibrillator, etc. The Bloodborne Pathogens Certification equips you and your loved ones with training on biohazards exposure control plans and the OSHA standards. You will also be taught on signs and symptoms of various health emergencies, including heart attack and biohazard exposure.

3. Establish an Emergency Supplies Kit

The supply kit should have every essential item after an unexpected disaster. The supply kit should include non-perishable food, medicine, batteries and chargers, backup generators, an extra phone, fuel, torches, a local map, and water. With the supplies, you wouldn’t be caught off guard. However, the food and medicine should be checked for expiry dates, while the rest supplies should be restocked after one year.

Copies of personal and financial documents should also be kept in the supply kit. After restocking the supply kits, ensure that all items are in air-tight plastic bags and kept in a mobile container. The supplies should always remain in an accessible place, such as a car trunk or garage.

4. Take an Insurance Cover

Various insurance covers, such as health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, renter’s insurance, and other property insurance, like car insurance, may help you effectively deal with unexpected disasters. As health insurance covers your emergency treatment costs, property insurance will help you recover all damaged and lost property.

If you have already taken an insurance cover, you should review the existing policy to see whether it covers family emergencies and disasters. Also, regularly check whether the contributions are up to date. Though you have the insurance cover against certain disasters, you should reduce the sources of hazards in your home.

5. Establish an Effective Family Disaster Plan

Coming out of a disaster strong and healthy requires a family to have an efficient disaster plan. A family disaster plan comprises of many details, such as:

•           Household communication plan.

•           Out-of-state family contact.

•           Community’s emergency contact.

•           Individual’s responsibility during a disaster.

The Household communication plan elaborates the activities to be done by every family member whenever a disaster occurs. Therefore, once an emergency occurs, everyone should know their responsibility. For instance, there should be members responsible for turning off home utilities, such as electricity and gas. Moreover, the family disaster plan should elaborate more on the emergency evacuation process and meeting spots. A drill should be carried out yearly to assess the readiness of every member in handling an emergency.

Identification of an out-of-state family contact is also part of the family disaster plan. Members of your family should know whom to contact and how to make contact in case of an emergency.

As you establish a family disaster plan, don’t forget to incorporate the needs of family members with special needs. Special need members include aging parents, physically challenged persons, and infants.

Conclusion

With the above steps of preparing for unseen disasters, you will be better positioned to face a disaster once it occurs. However, always follow the government’s guidelines on disaster preparedness.

Guest Contributor: Regina Thomas