Carolyn's Provident Living Column - May 2009

This month I would encourage you and your family to make an Emergency Plan. What will you do in an emergency or disaster situation? It is important to be aware of what types of emergencies can happen in your area and anticipate how you will respond. For our Ward areas we can anticipate and have had: avalanches, power outages, flooding, fires, evacuations, and road closures all in the last 5 years.

Recommendations this month would be to decide how your family will contact each other in the event of an emergency. Family members are often all not together, or at home during an emergency. How will you let your family know where you are or what your status, or situation is? Decide what you will do and then share this with your immediate family and friends. In an actual emergency it is often difficult to make phone calls in your immediate area, but you can make long-distance calls out of state. Make sure everyone in your family knows who the out of state person will be, their number to call, and then have a way to make that call either with a cell phone or a phone card, or money with them all the time to make the call.

Make a list with the following information:

• Name, phone number and email information for each family member.
• Emergency contact person’s name, phone number and email information
• An out of town person’s name, phone number and email information.

Put this on a small card and carry it with you.

There is an excellent website that has recommendations and a template you can fill in with this information and then download to your computer:
http://ready.adcouncil.org/beprepared