Students Living in Hurricane Zones for the First Time, Here are Tips on How to Prepare:
First of all, should you stay in the area?
Category 1- Move light weight objects such as chairs, tiki torches, umbrellas, plastic tables, and grill tarps (plus small grills) inside before the storm hits land and stay inside once it does.
Category 2- Roads may be blocked by fallen over trees, and if massive flooding occurs, there may be partial or total road loss on both sides of the road due to sink holes.
Category 3- Only people who are prepared and don’t have to worry about flooding in their zone, trees falling on their house, or having to go without electricity for a few days would stay. Water will also not be available for a few days from the tap or stores. You might want to board-up windows.
Category 4- Only very ballsy (or slightly moronic) and extremely prepared people would stay. Board-up windows.
Category 5- Only the insane would stay in this case.
Keep a 32 pack of water bottles at all times
In a backpack keep a first aid kit, phone charger and power bank, tea light candles, a box of matches, a flashlight and batteries (if not a friction or solar powered light), enough cash for a hotel for a week, and a couple days worth of clothes and snacks.
Keep at-least one 32 pack of water bottles per person.
Fill your bathtub(s) with water before it hits land, so that you can still get a couple baths in, because it can be weeks or maybe months depending on the area, till you can get water on tap again with a cat 4-5 hurricane.
You can boarder up your windows with plywood, number them for the next storm and to remember what they were used for.
Never run your generator inside of the house or an enclosed space.
Never leave your generator unattended. Someone will try to steal it.
Keep a bat around in case someone tries to loot your place in the immediate aftermath. Make it clear that your place is indeed occupied.
Power grids with hospitals are prioritized first in power outages. If you have a friend who lives on the same power grid as a hospital, stay with them if a prolonged power outage is a near certainty.
The moment you know a cat 4-5 is heading your way, you make plans to leave.
The moment you make the decision to evacuate before its mandated, pack-up enough cloths for a week, grab a few snacks for the road, make reservations at a hotel a safe distance away from the path of the storm, and head out immediately. The sooner the better, because roadways can get congested to the point that you only move a foot every ten minutes and hotels completely booked for entire towns for a cat 4-5.
Try to book a hotel with free breakfast first.
Get extra containers of gas for the trip. Stations will start to run out, especially for cat 4-5, and have mile long lines.
Bring important papers and documents with you, they might get lost in the storm from the hurricane, intensive flooding, maybe a sinkhole, or looting.
Bring valuables such as laptops and tablets so that they don’t get looted and so that you can keep connected with whats going on, and don’t leave them unattended or unguarded while traveling.
