Hurricane Preparedness Tips

Some practical hurricane tips for our Texas friends

Here are some preparedness tips for our Texas friends who plan to ride the storm out. This is based on my family's experience with Gustav and not having power for a week.

1. Get a generator now if you do not have one and plan to stay in your home, you will lose power if your are in the path. If you have one make sure its working. Generators that have been laid up for a year may not start and may have bad gasoline in them.

2. Get a stand up portable fan for your den area and a small window ac unit from walmart for your bedroom(about $100). Get plenty of extension cords and a couple power strips. Dont run everything off of the same cord and try to keep your cords as short as possible. Your generator can run your fridge, some lights, a fan and a small ac easily, but it will lose powere if your cords are too long. You also should run several cords from the generator, do not plug everything off of one cord. The cord may not be big enough for the juice. Long cords use more juice than short ones.

3. If your water stays on during the storm and your generator works, you can stay at home comfortably until power gets back on. If your water goes out, leave until it comes back on. Its miserable without water.

4. You will need a half dozen or so 5 gallon cans for gas. That will run your generator almost three days depending on whether you run a little ac which draws a lot of power.

5. You cant have enough bottled water. You need food to eat that doesnt need preparation. Peanut butter is good and cold cuts if you have a generator. Get some bbq stuff for when the storm passes and get ready for the neighbors.

6. You need flashlights and batteries of course. If you have a lot of trees, get your chainsaw ready. Test out your generator and get it all set up the day before the storm. Figure out how you will run cords now, it gets crazy during the storm. Count on your cell phones going out.

7. If you live near storm surge area or where you will take cat 3 winds, get out. If you are in a mobile home where you might take any hurricane winds, get out. If you are inland in a sturdy home and have a generator, you can consider riding it out. We rode it out and it was wilder than i thoguht it would be. We took a lot of damage but we were safe i thought unless a tornado hit.

8. Good luck to all. Make sure your vehicles are gassed. Dont wait another second, the lines might be too long to get these things.