If you don’t know how to prepare yourself and your home for the first 72 hours after a disaster, you should visit 72hours.org. 72 Hours is a website run by the City of San Francisco but offers valuable planning tips that would be useful to anyone.

There are two main areas to the site.  The first area is How To Prepare. This area teaches you to create an emergency plan, and what you’ll need ready and waiting for you to get through the first 72 hours after the disaster strikes. For each of the different topics discussed there are helpful tips included on how to help make your home safer on a day to day basis. The different topics include home safety, children, seniors & the disabled,  pets, utilities, food, water, first aid, go bag, phone, volunteer, training and community. I never realized how helpful it could be to have an out of state emergency contact in case of a natural disaster. The suggestion there that I want to do in our home is to create a “go bag” for all of the members of our home.

The second area of the site is the What To Do If section. This area instructs you on what to do in certain types of potentially disastrous situations.  The different topics included here are earthquake, storm/flooding, terror, contagious disease, transit safety, evacuation, fire, no power, tsunamis, sirens and shelter in place. I found the evacuation tips very helpful.

I found this site to be a very valuable resource that anyone could benefit from visiting. Are you and your home ready if a natural disaster strikes? Would you be able to get through the first 72 hours? Check out 72Hours.org and see if you’re ready. Let me know which idea you found most helpful.