National Preparedness Month 2015 – Power Outage Preparedness
Photo: Sebastian Vandrey, Flickr Creative Commons
In case you didn’t know, September is National Preparedness Month! Sponsored by FEMA, this is a nationwide effort to ready ourselves for catastrophes like floods, wildfires, hurricanes, and power outages.
How can you be part of National Preparedness Month? Since this year’s theme is “Don’t Wait. Communicate. Make Your Emergency Plan Today.”, you can start by creating your household’s emergency plan. Here are the questions you and your family should answer together:
- What is your “safe place,” and how will each of you get there?
- How will you contact each other?
- How will you reconnect if separated?
- What will you do in various emergency situations (i.e., flood, fire, tornado)?
- What will you do about pets?
Every member of the family should know this plan by heart, so that if disaster should strike, everyone will know exactly what to do. In a potentially dangerous situation, it’s much easier to follow a pre-determined plan than to attempt to make these decisions under high pressure.
If you want to further your household’s preparedness for the unexpected, we recommend ensuring that your home has backup power. Installing a backup generator means that the lights stay on and the appliances keep working when something goes wrong with the grid. This could mean the difference between having to leave the home and being able to stay, especially in winter, when not having power makes an unheated home unlivable.
One of the best parts about installing a backup generator is you don’t have to be an expert to operate it. With an automatic backup generator, the machine will turn on when it’s needed and supply your home with emergency energy, then shut off on its own once the power returns. Preparedness doesn’t come more conveniently than that.
Given that power outages are on the rise across the U.S. due to an aging grid and more frequent extreme weather, we strongly advise you to consider adding this upgrade to your home’s preparedness plan.
See our blog post about replacing surge protectors, another way to ready your home for storms! And for the most trusted electrician in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, get in contact with Wes Carver Electric.