Whether it’s a house fire, flood, or an F5 tornado that’s ripping and tearing its way down your street, everyone in your family needs to be ready for it.
You may not like the idea of scaring your 5-year-old about emergencies, but storms, fires, and floods aren’t going to wait around for them to grow up. Keep reading to discover emergency tips every family needs.
Emergency Tips Every Family Needs
Talking with your children now about these emergencies and discussing a plan of action for each scenario is crucial. By preparing them for these deadly encounters now, you’ll help them better cope during these situations so that they’re not left with their feet frozen to the floor. Check out these emergency tips that every family needs.
Be Sure Younger Children Know the Basics
When you have smaller children, it’s important that they know some basic information if they were to ever get lost or separated from you after an emergency has taken place. They should be able to tell first responders their first and last name, their phone number, and their home address.
A reader, Jan, gave me this awesome tip: get dog tags for your little ones with their address and phone number on it. Thread the dog tags on their shoelaces. She also mentioned teach them their address by making a song out of it. Brilliant tip!
Go Over Every Type of Emergency
While you don’t want to scare your children about emergencies and threats, it’s important that they are aware of them so they can respond correctly if that type of emergency were to ever happen.
Talk about each type of emergency with them in a calm manner. If you live on the West Coast, it’s important to teach them about earthquakes and what they need to do. When you live along the East Coast, discuss with them what to do if they ever experience a hurricane. Go over with your children what to do and where to go in case of a fire, bad weather, or any other type of threat that could happen. This is an important emergency tip every family needs to know. Have a Family Emergency Plan
It’s best to always plan ahead and prepare your children what to do during an emergency instead of hoping for the best. Here are a few ways in which you can develop a family emergency plan that every member of your family should know about. In case you missed this post: How to Put an Evacuation Plan Together
Practice each and every one of these emergency scenarios every couple of months just to keep things fresh in your childrens’ minds.
List of Phone Numbers
Keep a list of important phone numbers in a place that your children will always be able to easily find. These numbers include fire, police, poison control, school, relatives, and mom and/or dad’s work and cell number.
It also wouldn’t hurt to leave your address written down so your child can quickly inform emergency respondents. Printable: FSM Emergency Contact Info
Escape Routes
Walk your family around the house and discuss every possible escape route for every room. It’s a good idea to not only go over it, but to practice these escape routes every once in a while so that your children will know how to put them into action.
Emergency Contact
Also, make sure to have a number of a relative or friend that lives outside your immediate area. That’s because you want a contact who hopefully wasn’t affected by the emergency. That way they can know where you are after a natural disaster has occurred. They will be your point person that can alert others of your condition and whereabouts.
Fire and Water Proof Important Documents
Purchasing a small safe that is fire rated and waterproof to store your important documents. You could also consider a rated filing cabinet for your important documents, although it may not protect them as well.
Put in this safe place all of your family’s social security cards, birth certificates, marriage certificate, health insurance information, bank, credit card, and investment account numbers, latest tax return, copies of medical records, pictures, and other things of importance.
Food Storage Moms FREE Printable Emergency Binder Download (Please be patient it takes a little time to download to your computer as a PDF)
Show Your Family Members Where the Emergency Kit is Kept
Every home should have an emergency kit and your children should know where to find it. It’s not a bad idea to have one ready in your home, and also one that’s kept in your car. Here’s a checklist of a 72-hour emergency kit for reference.
Meeting Places
Depending on the age of family members, try to determine and go over with your family at least three meeting spots in case of certain emergencies. One for fire in your home, another if you need to move outside your neighborhood, and one that’s further away from the affected area if you all need to quickly evacuate.
Keep Smoke Detectors & Carbon Monoxide Monitors On Every Floor of Your Home
Always be sure to have up-to-date batteries in your smoke detectors, and make certain that you have them on every floor of your home. Keep one close to the kitchen (where most fires start), near or in every bedroom (based on local codes), and even in the basement. Smoke Detectors and Carbon Monoxide Monitors
Don’t Skip Out on Home, Car, and Property Insurance
There are certain people who make the decision not to maintain their home, car, or property insurance because of financial strain, but the truth is, you really can’t afford not to.
Don’t be one of those people. An emergency is already devastating enough on a family, but not being able to replace what you lost could leave your family in a far more threatening financial position.
Final Word
Preparing your family for emergencies can be the difference between life and death. You may not like the idea of sharing this type of information with your children because you believe that it may cause too much anxiety for them.
Think about how much worse it would be if that emergency did happen and how much more scared they would be because they didn’t know what to do.
What are some other emergency tips that families should know about that may not have made this list? Has your family ever been put in one of these situations? If so, how did each family member respond? Please keep prepping. May God bless this world.
Copyright Images: House Damaged Deposit photos_7761549_s-2019
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