10 Essential Items To Survive A Major Hurricane

welcome back survivalists so we've now officially entered hurricane season here in the United States so hurricane season runs from June 1st until November 30th but if you've not gotten prepared yet and built your hurricane kit yet you still have a little bit of time before we really hit peak hurricane season this year NOAA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an above-normal hurricane season so they're predicting that we're gonna see 19 main storms 10 hurricanes and up to 6 major hurricanes this year and a major hurricane just means that the hurricane has wind speeds of 111 miles per hour or higher now when preparing for a hurricane there are some unique challenges that you may not have with other natural disasters and you want to plan accordingly with a hurricane the number one leading cause of death is actually going to be the storm surge now a storm surge is the increased ocean water levels as a hurricane approaches land phone is literally pushing the water in land and if you live anywhere near the coast this is something that you really need to be aware of and you have to be constantly monitoring this and figuring out if you want to bunk in and kind of shelter in place or if it's time that you pack up your hurricane kit and you bug out and you evacuate to higher ground and this is partially why when you build your hurricane kit you want to have like mobility in mind and either build it in like a large Tupperware container or maybe a large backpack something that you could grab and go in case you do need to evacuate now if you don't actually live near the coast you still need to be concerned about inland Fling so inland flooding occurs from the increased rainfall which can sometimes last several days that occurs when you have a major hurricane to make landfall and inland flooding is actually the second leading cause of hurricane related deaths you also need to be prepared for destructive winds which can literally blow roofs of homes and send trees and other large debris flying through your windows just last year hurricane durian saw wind speeds as high as 185 miles per hour and these high wind speeds can also spawn off tornadoes which can cause even more destruction and of course the days after a hurricane can be just as critical in life as the day the hurricane actually makes landfall it's not uncommon to see entire communities go without power for several days or even several weeks after a hurricane strikes it's also not uncommon to see roads become completely impassable or completely or Road away due to the hurricane and this can obviously make it much harder to restore power to communities or to make it almost impossible for you to be able to be reached by 'man see responders you also really have to worry about entire communities water supplies being contaminated from inland flooding or from the actual storm surge the day is after a hurricane you're also going to see an increased health risk from mold and bacteria and viruses due to the destruction of a hurricane and 2017 after hurricane Harvey made landfall we saw massive flooding in Texas and all along the Gulf Coast I personally flew down to Houston Texas to help homeowners in that recovery effort many of the homes in Houston Texas saw flood water entering their home as high as six feet and after that water finally started receding all the drywall the carpet and all of their furniture immediately started growing mold on it to part my efforts down there is help homeowners remove all that drywall and carpet and furnitures before the mold completely took over their homes and we essentially stripped their first floors of their home down to the studs and I was completely blown away by how many homeowners were still living in their houses days after the flooding while everything around them is rotting and decaying and starting to grow mold you know this obviously poses tremendous health risk especially to your respiratory system to prepare for hurricane season you want to keep all these specific challenges and threats in mind when you're stocking up on supplies and plan accordingly so in today's video we're gonna be taking a look at the hurricane preparation guide put out by FEMA and inside this guy they had eight categories of items that they recommend that all Americans buy in preparation for a major hurricane so I'll be breaking down each of these eight categories of items and giving you guys specific examples and my thoughts on them and at the end of the video I'll give you my personal recommendations for some additional items that I think you should include in your hurricane kit that FEMA doesn't have on their list so the first category of item that they is gonna be tools and safety items and one of the obvious ones in this category is going to be flashlights now when you're buying flashlights there's really two categories of flashlights you can get a directional flashlight like this which is what we're all pretty used to but what I actually recommend is that you buy an omnidirectional flashlight like this or otherwise known as a lantern so something like this is gonna be far more useful in a power outage situation if you think about a flashlight if you're trying to prepare food or use the bathroom or really do anything it gets pretty tricky if you have to hold a flashlight or lay down on the counter in omnidirectional lantern like this is gonna help you free up your hands so that you can actually prepare food or use the bathroom or anything like that and you only need maybe one or two of these to illuminate an entire room so your entire family can have a light just from one large lantern like this so you absolutely can buy some flashlights and they're pretty inexpensive but I do definitely recommend that you include some larger battery powered lanterns like this in your kit as well they also recommend including some sort of multi-purpose tool like a Leatherman or a Swiss Army knife and I definitely agree with this you never really know exactly what situation is going to arise and having kind of a general tool like that will really help you out in most situations so they also recommend matches or lighters in a waterproof container and if you do that I would go ahead and go with the waterproof matches this is gonna help you out especially in a possible flooding situation so I'll be honest lately I've actually been moving towards fireless emergency kits you know personally I now have small children in my house and I don't really like the idea of having multiple candles throughout the house and having a propane burner in my living rooms I've actually been moving towards battery-powered light sources and food supplies that don't require cooking or any sort of fire just worthy kind of short term power out of situations if you have a lot of kids in your house you may want to consider doing the same they also recommend you have some sort of emergency whistle in your hurricane kit and I agree with this when you're dealing with a hurricane and potential for high water flooding like I said in Houston Texas they saw flood water as high as six feet in some of these homes as emergency responders are trying to help homeowners to evacuate their homes or they're looking for survivors having an emergency whistle to help them locate you it could be the difference between life and death so the next category of items in their list is going to be emergency communication and one of the first things they recommend is that you put all your emergency contacts on an actual piece of paper and include that in your kit and the idea behind this is what if your battery dies or your phone gets wet you're still going to have a physical copy of all the contact information of maybe your family members who you may need to evacuate to their home or maybe your medical professional that knows your your medical history already they also recommend including cell phone chargers in your kit and and having some sort of battery backup so something like this you can get pretty inexpensively and I charge this ahead of time when I know there's a storm coming and I can actually get three full charges of my cell phone just on this little battery backup and these are pretty inexpensive today you can get a decent one anywhere from twenty to forty dollars they also recommend that you have any mergency radio which gets the NOAA Weather Channel and I definitely agree with this this is actually one of the first items I tell people to buy when they're first starting off and getting into prepping having that access to the latest news or weather updates when you don't have any power is going to be critical and something like this will give you that constant on you something it may also give you a morale boost just by listening to the radio this also has an emergency flashlight built into it and it even has a USB port in the back here so you could charge your cell phone off of this now this particular one has a rechargeable battery which you can charge using the crank on the side here or you can leave it out in the daytime and that rechargeable battery will charge from these solar panels on top so if you don't have an emergency radio like this yet this is definitely one of the first items that you want to buy for your emergency kit you usually get something like this between thirty and forty dollars on Amazon this particular one is made by Oregon Scientific and I'll have a link to this radio as well as a lot of the other recommended items that I talked about in this video down in description below the next category of items is going to be water and food supplies now FEMA is recommending that you have at least three days of non-perishable food supply for each member in your family they also recommend that you have one gallon of water per person per day for up to three days so if you have five members in your family that means they're recommending that you have 15 gallons of water just like this stored away just for emergencies and this waters not just used for hydration but as well as cooking and sanitation and you can buy a gallon of water like that for less than a dollar at most grocery stores now when you're buying food supplies to your home there's a couple different options you can go with this one of the easiest and obvious ones is just buy additional food that you and your family typically eat and just make sure you have several extra days worth of food kind of stored away in your pantry another option is that you can buy some prepackaged and sealed to ride food so something like this is chicken and gravy and all you need to do is just add some hot water mix it up and then you and your family can have a hot meal even if you don't have any power in your home now these are a little bit more expensive you can get something like this or five or six dollars just for one meal and then another option is you can buy a bucket of food like this so this one here has 60 servings of those freeze-dried packaged meals and they do have some variety in the bucket something like this will last you up to 25 years and honestly the food in here probably would last a good bit longer than that and all you need to do is just add some hot water to these freeze-dried meals and then you and your family gonna have some halfway-decent food no matter what the situation is I personally keep three of those buckets in my home at all time just in case of some sort of disaster like a major hurricane I just kind of stick them under my stairs and I don't really think about them but they give me the peace of mind knowing that I've checked that box on my emergency kit and that my family and I will have plenty of food no matter what the situation is FEMA also includes infant formulas and diapers in their kit as well if that's applicable to you then yeah you definitely want to have extra baby supplies in your disaster kit just in case and if you have any pets you definitely want to include some additional pet food and other supplies in your emergency kit as well so the next category of items is going to be hygiene and sanitation and this is definitely pretty important especially if you did experience any sort of flooding in your home or if you and your family have to go several days or even weeks without any power in your home so FEMA recommends you have some soap disinfectant in sanitizers in your hurricane kit and I recommend that you just go out and buy a pack of hand sanitizer like this again if you did experience some flooding you're gonna find things like dead fish and animals outside of your house if you did have flooding indoors you're in a potential mold in there and staying clean and sanitized is going to be critical right you almost always see in a huge spike in different diseases and infections immediately after a major flood or hurricane they also recommend keeping paper towels in moist towelettes in your kit as well as additional toilet paper they are also recommending a gallon of bleach in your kit as well you can use this as a disinfectant you can also use this to sanitize the water if you need it too you also want to include oral hygiene in that as well and buy some additional toothbrushes and toothpaste just in case something happens to your typical toothbrush and toothpaste the next category of item is going to be protective gear and clothing so they recommend that you have additional clothes or everybody and your family preferably something warm so some jackets or some fleece is for everybody in your family you want to make sure everybody has some sturdy boots as well if you've ever seen any of the aftermath after a hurricane there's usually just a tremendous amount of debris all around your home so you don't want to be walking around in that stuff with some flip-flops or sandals on so make sure you have some sturdy boots they also include blankets or sleeping bags in their kit so let's say worst case scenario your bottom floor floods and everybody now needs to sleep upstairs or even in the Attic you want to make sure they have blankets and sleeping bags for everybody so they can actually try to get some sleep during the hurricane they don't have this in their list but I would personally also throw some work gloves in that kit as well again there's usually a lot of debris outdoors after a major hurricane and you want to be able to handle those objects without cutting up your hands or worrying about rusty nails or anything so the next category of items is going to be medical needs so if you are in any kind of really important medication make sure you have enough supplies try to have two or three weeks worth of supplies if you can just kind of in worst case scenario you can't access the pharmacy or the hospital to get no more medication make sure you have a few weeks worth of supplies before hurricane season or before a specific hurricane strikes you if you wear glasses trying to have an extra pair of glasses in your hurricane kit as well just in case the next item that the recommend is having a first aid kit inside your hurricane kit and this is pretty important one of the first items that you should buy especially with a hurricane where there is going to be that increased wind speed there's going to be a lot of debris flying outdoors and maybe even shattering windows so there is a chance that you may get some sort of laceration from that debris or broken glass and if you then have to go several days without clean water or out power you know there's just an increased likelihood that those constant lacerations may become infected so make sure you have a first aid kit so that you can close up those wounds and protect them from getting infected I'm gonna throw another item in this category there's gonna be anti diarrhea medication so just in case you do eat some contaminated food or drink some not very clean water you know diarrhea is gonna be one of those very first symptoms of food poisoning so you make sure you have some anti diarrhea medicine in your first-aid kit or in your hurricane kit the next category of items is going to be critical documents so you want to have photocopies of your personal IDs as well as personal records such as birth certificates or marriage certificates and even your medical records try to have copies of those in your hurricane kit just in case those original somehow get lost or damaged you also want to have copies of your financial documents as well so maybe your bank statements or 401k statements as well as copies of your property records so maybe copies of your deed or your insurance company and of course you want to have cash in your hurricane kit as well if the power goes down in your community for let's say a week but you need to get access to some food for your family or maybe some gas for your vehicle and they can't process credit cards anymore they're only going to be cash transactions and all of these critical documents you want to keep them all in some sort of waterproof and portable container so that if you do need to evacuate your home you can just grab this one box and you just leave with it you have everything that you need already in this container this one here is actually fireproof as well so if my home ever did burn down all those critical documents as well as my cash is going to be protected it's also recommended that you include items in there to keep you and your family occupied so maybe some books maybe a deck of cards maybe some puzzles or board games you and your family may have to be locked in that home and go without power for several days so you want to be prepared for that and have something to kind of keep you occupied so there are some additional items that I personally recommend that you also include in your hurricane kit that FEMA did not have on their list and one of those items is going to be a way of purifying in filtering water you very well may not have access to clean drinking water for several days or weeks after a major hurricane so one of the simplest water filters would be something like this so this is made by katadyn and it's a thermos but inside of it it has a very powerful water filter so you can fill this up with contaminated water and then when you drink out of it you're sucking it through that filter which is going to purify that water and you can get something like this fairly cheap on Amazon maybe 3040 dollars there's also something known as a life straw which is very similar to this except without the container and essentially you're just sucking water through a powerful charcoal filter like that so that's a very affordable option right there and another option if you have a larger family is you can get something like this which is a portable water filter this one here is from survivor filter and with this you stick the hose in one source of dirty water and you stick the end of this hose in a clean container and you literally just pump the water through the filter here but something like this could provide you and your family with clean drinking water in the worst case scenario and I have links to both of these water filters down in the description below it's the next category of items will really come in handy if you need to go without power for several days or weeks and solar-powered flashlights this one here is made by hybrid light and actually has two different batteries in it one of them is replaceable and the other one is rechargeable and rechargeable one charges from this solar panel built right into the handle of the flashlight so if you had to go a long time without power all you need to do to leave this out in the daytime to charge it and then at night time you'll have enough juice in here to provide light for you and your family so this is an example of a directional solar power flashlight and this is an example of an omnidirectional solar-powered flashlight so this one is by illuminated and it has a large solar panel here on the top and it's actually inflatable and all that inflation does is really just diffuse the light so again this is more of a solar-powered Lantern and it can illuminate an entire room it also has an emergency beacon feature on it where it will flash a light so if you are trapped in your attic because of flooding you're gonna let this charge in the daytime and then in the evening time it'll start flashing maybe in your window just signal that you may need some help so again this one's made by illuminate and I highly recommend you guys looking at this company this very cool company and this one here does the directional solar powered light is made by hybrid light so the kid that we built today is specifically for hurricanes but if you want to know what's inside a more general kit now to help you out in case of an earthquake or a blackout or tornado click right here to check out my breakdown of the FEMA disaster kit don't forget to subscribe for more prepping and survival videos and remember I'll have links down in description below to all the items that I mentioned in today's video thanks so much for watching on the see guys over in the next video

Channel: Survival Know How

Views: 5,856

Rating: 4.9750781 out of 5

Keywords: hurricane, hurricane kit, hurricane preparedness, hurricane preparedness kit, hurricane preparedness 2020, hurricane preparedness tips, survival gear, emergency preparedness, disaster kit, emergency preparedness kit, emergency preparedness food, best survival kit, hurricane prep, hurricane season, hurricane preparation, hurricane preparation kit, hurricane season 2020, shelter in place, tropical storm kit, storm kit, flooding, flooding preperation, build a hurricane kit

Id: d1_4cW8RZ9k

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020