Every year, Florida faces a heightened risk of hurricanes from the start of June to the end of November. To protect your home and your family, it’s important to be prepared. That’s why, as soon as possible, it’s important to assemble a checklist to assess your hurricane preparedness and safety. A hurricane safety checklist, if you will.
How Much of a Risk Are Hurricanes in Florida?
In Florida, hurricanes are a massive risk, especially during the ‘hurricane season,’ when conditions are more favorable for hurricane formation.
Technically speaking, there’s always a risk of hurricanes even outside of the typical hurricane season, but the chances are so low as to be nearly nonexistent. As noted by Accuweather: “Since records began, there have only ever been two hurricanes that have reached Category 2 status outside of the tropical season.”
In a recent article, we highlighted how, despite being considered “low risk” compared to neutral or La Nina conditions, hurricanes can still happen during El Nino years. In fact, Florida gets more hurricanes during El Nino years than it does during La Nina ones.
In short, hurricanes are an ever-present risk, which is a large part of the reason why you should start preparing for them as soon as humanly possible.
What Do I Need in MY Hurricane Safety Checklist?
There are several categories of things to do and prepare as part of your hurricane preparedness strategy. Some of the biggest categories of things to include in your hurricane safety checklist include:
- Food/Water.
- Home Preparation.
- Evacuation Planning.
- Communication.
- First Aid.
- Tools.
- Sanitation.
This is just the broad list of hurricane preparedness items to consider. Let’s break them down by type to help you ensure you can prepare a comprehensive checklist. Also, it’s important to note that your checklist items might need to vary a bit depending on whether you plan to shelter in place or evacuate as soon as a hurricane warning is issued for your area.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: Food Items
One of the most important things to have prepared for any emergency situation where you face a potential blackout is a stockpile of non-perishable, ready-to-eat food. You also want to ensure that you have a good mix of nutrients in your diet even when you can’t cook like normal.
Some of the top food items to prepare include:
- Bottled Water. Everybody needs to have some clean drinking water. Bottled water provides a perfect portable water source. Prepare at least a gallon of water per person for each day you plan to shelter in place.
- Peanut Butter. If you aren’t allergic, peanut butter is an excellent source of healthy fats, vitamins, and protein that can last for a long, long time on your shelf.
- Canned or Cup Fruit. Give yourself some options for a wide variety of vitamins and nutrients with preserved fruit in canned or cup form.
- Protein Bars. When you can’t get red meat or other meat-based sources of protein, protein bars and snacks can make for a good substitute. They’re also often great if you’re a vegetarian who doesn’t want to eat meat anyway!
- Canned Vegetables. Eat your veggies! Canned vegetables are a great source of nutrition to help balance your diet and they can last for a long time on your shelf.
- MREs. Meals Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, offer a balanced nutritional profile meant to help soldiers stay fit and ready for action on the battlefield. Plus, they have heating packs that allow you to enjoy a hot meal whether you’re stuck at home without electricity or on the road!
- Pet Food. Don’t forget your pets! They’ll need a stockpile of food to weather the storm alongside you.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: General Home Preparation
If there’s a hurricane watch or warning issued for your area, there are a few things you need to do as soon as possible before the storm hits:
- Proactive Yard Maintenance. Clean your yard of loose objects that could catch the breeze.
- Window Protection. If you don’t have impact windows, put up plywood coverings to protect your window openings from direct strikes by storm debris.
- Roof Integrity Check. Check your roof for any worn or damaged tiles which might come loose in a storm.
- Water for Sanitation. Fill your bathtubs with tap water that you can use for sanitary purposes like cleaning yourself off or flushing your toilets in case there’s a water service disruption.
- Disconnect Utilities. Consider turning off your electricity, gas, and water lines. Especially if you plan to evacuate your home ahead of the storm.
- Pet Training Pads. If you have pets, especially dogs, get some training pads ready for them to use when they can’t safely go outside.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: Evacuation Planning Items
Before you get in the car to leave the hurricane’s projected path, it’s important to have a plan that you can follow and adjust as needed. Some things to consider for your evacuation plan include:
- Maps and Route Plans. If a major hurricane interrupts cellular service and satellite communications, you’ll need to have a map with a route plan marked out that you can follow even if your GPS goes out.
- Radio. If the storm knocks out the cell tower, having a radio in your car to communicate with emergency services and receive important updates can be a literal life-saver. Pack a portable radio that you can take with you.
- Roadside Emergency Kit. During a hurricane evacuation, you can run into a lot of unexpected problems that might affect your vehicle. Assembling a roadside emergency kit with a wheeljack, tire iron, jumper cables, portable battery charger, fix-a-flat, and other tools can help ensure that any emergencies won’t stop you for long.
- Extra Gas. If you have a gas-powered vehicle, consider keeping a few extra cans of gas at your house to top off your tank before you leave for an evacuation, as local gas stations might become over-crowded once a hurricane watch goes into effect. Do NOT keep fuel cans in your vehicle’s cabin, as gasoline fumes may escape the container. As noted by Morin Brothers Automotive: “prolonged exposure to gasoline vapors can lead to nausea, respiratory problems, and even damage to your central nervous system.” Not to mention the risk of sparking gas fumes into an explosion in your car. An external mount is preferable if you plan to carry extra fuel on the go.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: Communication Tools and Strategies
Whether you plan to shelter in place or evacuate, it’s important to be able to communicate with emergency responders, friends, and family during a hurricane. Preparing some alternative communication methods just in case the power goes out and you lose cell service can be very important. Here are some good options for staying connected even through the worst storms:
- Ham Radio. We’ve already covered how useful radio can be as a communication tool during evacuations, but they’re also good for if you plan to shelter in place! Home ham radio setups can be more robust than anything you can pack in your car, meaning you can communicate with people from much farther away than with a portable radio setup. However, you will need a power source for it if the power goes out, like a generator or backup battery system.
- Starlink Internet. Starlink is a satellite-based internet service provider that bypasses the reliance on ground-based cables and cell towers to directly connect with Earth Low Orbit (ELO) satellites. Starlink boasts that their kits are designed to “endure up to 160+ kph (99+ mph) winds comfortably.” That’s tough enough to take a high Cat 1 or low Cat 2 storm easily–-the kinds of storms you’d be the most likely to shelter in place for. However, for major hurricanes (Cat 3 and above), it would be best to take down the system kit and put it back up once the storm has passed so you can have internet access after the fact without having to wait for repair crews to fix local internet infrastructure. These kits do require an external power source, such as a solar panel or a battery backup system, however.
- Other Satellite-Based Internet. If you don’t have Starlink, other satellite-based communication systems can also be useful, though many aren’t as easy to take down and put back together in the face of a major hurricane as the small, portable Starlink system is.
- Fiber-Optic Internet. If you have the option in your area, fiber-optic internet can be a robust, cost-effective high speed internet service that is reasonably resilient against storms with their underground cables. However, if a fiber optic cable gets damaged, you could lose your internet connection entirely.
Cellular phones are often the default means of communication and accessing the internet today, but they may be prone to service disruptions if a cell tower gets damaged or outright destroyed by a major storm. So, having ready-to-go alternatives remains important for hurricane preparedness.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: First Aid/Medical Supplies
During a major hurricane, local hospitals might not have the bandwidth to accept patients for anything short of dire emergencies requiring immediate emergency aid. And, if you do need aid, storm conditions can delay emergency responders.
So, to help ensure you and your family’s safety during a storm, it can be helpful to pack a broad range of first aid and medical supplies. Some key things to pack include:
- Bandages. Great for minor wounds, adhesive bandages are a must-have in any first aid kit. For deeper wounds, consider getting trauma pads with a high absorbency rate.
- Antiseptic. With any open wound, there’s a risk of contaminants infecting the wound site. Some antiseptic wipes and antibiotic ointment can help keep wounds clean so they can heal more quickly and easily.
- Cold/Flu Medicine. Minor colds are a common problem when the power goes out and you lose central heat & air. Combine this with large pools of standing water that often get left by storms, and you have a prime setting for bacterial growth which can promote colds or flus.
- Tourniquet. For major wounds to an extremity, you may need to apply a tourniquet to cut off the blood flow so you or your family member doesn’t lose too much blood too quickly. Tourniquets are priceless for preventing life-threatening bleeding.
- Hemostatic Gauze. For major wounds, you want the bleeding to stop as quickly as possible. Hemostatic gauze helps combat excessive bleeding by promoting clotting.
- Sanitized Shears. For some injuries, you may need to remove the patient’s clothing, but not be able to do so normally. For these occasions, a pair of sanitary shears can be worth their weight in gold. Cutting away clothing can be the safest option for accessing a wound and removing potential contaminants in the clothing.
- Disposable Gloves. Regardless of how clean you think your hands are, sterile medical gloves will be the safer, cleaner option. Look for nitrile gloves over latex, if possible, as some people may have an allergic reaction to latex gloves.
- Emergency Blanket. Deep wounds and blood loss can lead to dangerous dips in body temperature. An emergency blanket can help prevent hypothermia by improving heat retention in an emergency.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: Important Tools
Before, during, and after a hurricane, you may need to make emergency preparations or repairs to your home. As such, it’s important to have the right tools on hand to do the work. Some basic items to have in your home toolbox include:
- Work Gloves. A nice pair of protective gloves can help keep your hands safe from splinters, blisters, and more while you work.
- Hammers. Both metal claw-type and rubber mallet-type hammers are important for different tasks around the house. Claw hammers are great for putting in nails and removing them later. Useful for putting up boards if you need to. Mallets offer a softer, less destructive means of driving objects like ground stakes.
- Screwdrivers and Screws. Fasten objects with screws for more permanent mountings around the home. Or remove screwed-in objects with a screwdriver.
- Drill. A powered drill can be great for saving time on screwing in objects or removing screws.
- Ladder. Preferably one that can be opened into an A shape or extended fully for reaching your roof and other high, hard-to-reach places. When using a ladder, please make sure the legs are level and that you have someone else to hold it steady.
- Duct Tape. “If you can’t fix it, duct it. If you can’t duct it, it ain’t broke.” This might be an old joke, but it’s one that highlights just how useful duct tape can be for a wide range of uses. Duct tape can help temporarily seal cracks, fasten loose objects, and make other short-term repairs that help hold you over until more permanent fixes can be made.
These are just some of the most basic tools to make sure you have on hand that are useful for a variety of jobs around the home. Other things, like staple guns, gardening shears, branch cutters, and the like can be useful for more specialized preparations and post-hurricane cleanup.
Hurricane Safety Checklist: Sanitation Supplies
Keeping clean during a hurricane can be a massive challenge, but an important one for maintaining your health and safety. Making sure you have some sanitation supplies on hand can mean the difference between a relatively comfortable few days of sheltering in place or travel and a miserable experience.
Some key sanitation preparations to make include:
- Fill a Tub with Water. As mentioned earlier, filling a tub with water can be important for keeping things sanitary during a storm if you plan to shelter in place. You can fill the tub with water and use buckets to flush toilets or wet down towels to wipe off sweat and dirt in place of a full bath or shower.
- BuyWet Wipes. If the water stops working at your home or you plan to evacuate, having some wet wipes to clean your hands can be a great way to keep them clean. Hand sanitizer also works, but doesn’t necessarily help you remove dirt and oils from your hands.
- Prepare Clean Towels. For wiping yourself off or cleaning surfaces around your home, towels are a must-have.
- Assemble Several Days’ Worth of Clothing. Whether you plan to shelter in place or evacuate, be sure to check that you have at least three full sets of clothes to wear (tops, bottoms, and underwear) for each person in your household. That should give you something to change into if your clothes become dirty for at least a few days until power is restored or you’re able to reach a shelter with laundry service. Consider prioritizing clothes that you can wash without a washer and are easy to hang-dry.
- Acquire a Clothesline. If power remains out for a long period of time after a storm, you may need to manually wash and dry your clothes. Hanging up a clothesline after the storm passes can let you dry your clothes even without a working dryer. Hand detergents can also be useful here, but be sure to set aside a dedicated wash pan or bucket for the task.
Pre-Hurricane Safety Checklist Priority #1: Wind Mitigation Upgrades
Before a hurricane is even on the forecast, it’s important to make critical wind mitigation upgrades to your home as soon as possible. One of the most important upgrades to make is replacing your windows and doors with impact-rated versions that can withstand hurricane force winds, rain, and heavy blows without completely shattering like a standard window or glass door.
This massively improves your home’s chances of withstanding hurricanes, as it prevents the kind of explosive pressurization that so frequently causes total structural collapse during major hurricanes.
Even outside of hurricane season, having impact windows and doors can help improve home security, frustrating would-be intruders by providing an extremely difficult to break barrier.
Need new impact windows ASAP? Reach out to Karoly Windows & Doors today! We’ll get you started with a free consultation to help you identify the best windows for your home and budget!
