Living in California the past few years we haven’t had to do a lot of Hurricane prep as we haven’t had a hurricane hit us in California. Granted we did have wildfires, but prep for that is fairly different since you don’t get much warning for those. But this post isn’t about the differences of natural disaster prep, although I could do that in another post. This is a post about how we prep for a hurricane.
As I’m writing this hurricane Dorian is slowly making his way to the US. Dorian has changed his mind quite a few times about where he’s going and where he may make landfall in the US if at all.
I grew up in Florida so this is not my first rodeo in hurricane prep, but the biggest difference here is that this is the first hurricane I will possibly experience as a mom. I didn’t do much prep for any of the other hurricanes because I was a child, and pretty much my parents took care of that. I don’t remember much about Andrew, but the whole Charlet, Ivan, Frances, Jeanne group of hurricanes, all I remember about those is building a makeshift bed in the hallway, and then being without power for about a week or so, and trying to find a way to get back to work once they reopened the bridges.
This storm is different because, we really don’t know if we will get any of it, and if we do when and how much. And it’s also different because there is a little person dependent on us that we need to make sure is ready and prepared too. Right now, it looks like we will see some wind and rain, but as a Floridian you know that can change at ANY point. So, while we may not evacuate unless it becomes mandatory, we did do a little prep so I’ll talk a little bit about what we did.
The first thing we did when we heard it could be coming towards us was move the patio furniture up close to the house. Now if we feel that the winds are going to be bad we will move them all into the house. But right now we think they are fine where they are.
Then of course we got our supplies. We made sure we had our lanterns and portable fans, with extra batteries. We also have two portable chargers so we have been keeping them plugged in so they are good and juiced up for if we lose power. We are also keeping all our other electronics plugged in as often as possible so that if and/or when we lose power everything is good to go for at least a little bit.
Now, my husband and I both work from home so we weren’t as concerned for gas as others since we didn’t need it for actual driving purposes. But of course we did want to make sure we had full tanks so if it did get bad we could evacuate if told to do so. So while we didn’t go out at first to get gas, once we knew they were coming up refuel the stations I did send him out to fill up the tanks. He said there was plenty of gas and no one at the station so I didn’t feel as badly about taking gas someone needs to actually drive to get back and forth to work or school or doctors appointments or so on.
As for actual supplies, we have been semi stocking up on things since we moved just because we knew it was hurricane season and we didn’t want to be rushing and trying to be like everyone else in a panic if a storm was heading our way. We had our cases of water, we had some canned food, some snacks going. We did go and get some bread and make sure we had plenty of snacks for Cameron so that she would be taken care of. I made sure to get some caffeine because if we are out of power I am still going to need something to help me get through the day. The types of snacks we had are goldfish, cheese-its, teddy grahams, nilla wafers, pouches for Cameron, peanut butter crackers, Cheerios, pop tarts, chips, all really healthy stuff. Haha then for canned food we have beans, some soups that can be eaten cold if needed, and some chef boy r dee canned meals. We also have enough peanut butter to last about 6 months.
Besides supplies, I also have made sure to pack some emergency bags that we can grab quickly and go, and made sure to put all of our important paperwork in a folder and put it with our stuff so we have everything we need.
Lastly, I’ve made sure to get shows and movies downloaded on our devices so if we lose power we have one more way to entertain Cameron, because she’s almost 2, she won’t realize we are without power and can only do so much. We want to make sure her days are as normal as can be.
We still don’t know if we will get hit a little or head on, but I feel like we are pretty ready to deal with whatever may come our way.
Do you have a hurricane prep plan? Have you ever experienced a hurricane before?
