Check your Food Stash

This could be as simple as checking your three-week ready supplies, or you may want to take this moment to get motivated and add to your supplies. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Cans of tuna and beans will get you by.

Check Your Water Situation

Check that you have one gallon per person per day for three weeks of drinking and cooking water. If your home is on a well, do you have emergency power for the pump?

Check Batteries

Check all your battery-operated devices, including radios, flashlights, and cell phones. Stock up or recharge them as needed.

Prepare to Stay Warm

Severe cold can kill, and furnaces need electricity for the blowers. What’s your backup source of heat? Gather your sleeping bags and extra blankets if you don’t have a fireplace or woodstove. Eat extra calories, especially carbohydrates, to keep warmer if your heat is out. If you have heat and a neighbor doesn’t, consider offering up your spare room during the outage.

Get Backup Cooking Fuel

Stock up on charcoal or propane for your outside barbecue, or have a camp stove and fuel handy. Never burn fuels inside or outside near doors or windows. Carbon monoxide kills.

Collect Medical Needs

Check your supply of household prescription medicines and medical supplies such as syringes, for all household members, including pets. Also, check and refresh your first aid kit.

Make a Plan

Go over your family emergency plan. Give each person a pocket card with contact phone numbers and a place to reunite if separated.

Gas Up and Use Your Car

Cars make excellent survival tools. They can provide warmth and shelter, charge your phone, and move you to a safer spot. Plus, your car probably has the best portable radio you own. Some newer cars don’t have AM radio. If this applies to you, get a low-cost portable radio that includes the AM band, so you can still listen to local news, including Voice of Vashon emergency alerts at 1650AM. Gas up the car (or keep it charged up if it’s electric). Prevent carbon monoxide poisoning: don’t run the car inside a garage or near windows or doors.

Check the Generator

Fuel it. Check the oil. Test start it. Review operating instructions. Unless you have an automatic switchover system, show everyone how to disconnect household power before starting the generator. You could electrocute a power lineman by reverse-energizing the local grid! If your home has solar power and a battery with a grid-tied inverter, ask your solar installer to help you test it and understand how to use it for essential services, such as lights, the well pump, and heat and hot water, while grid power is out.

Contact Neighbors

Call the folks next door and across the road, and make plans to ensure that everyone is okay during the emergency. Consider what skills and resources you might be able to share, and be aware of families who have members with vulnerabilities, such as reduced mobility, chronic health issues, or very young children. A storm is a great time to re-energize your Neighborhood Emergency Response Organization (NERO).

Get Cash

ATMs and credit or debit cards may not work during an emergency, because businesses’ Point-of-Sale machines require electricity plus internet. Cash will get you emergency supplies when all else fails.

Tune In

Review ways to get emergency information, especially through Voice of Vashon — 1650AM, the VoV smartphone app, or VoiceOfVashon.org.