The week of March 10 through March 14 has been declared Severe Weather Awareness week for Missouri. As the clouds gather, DO YOU HAVE A PLAN?
Communities are planning to test their warning systems for tornadoes or severe storms. Residents are being encouraged to develop a plan for their families and households in case they receive the TORNADO warning. Businesses such as Engrave-A-Crete in Mansfield, Missouri, plan for the safety of their employees. Major retailers offer shelter to their customers who are in the store at the time of emergency. (Although, my family once experienced being kicked out of a store in another community, just as a major storm hit because the employees were told to CLOSE the business for the storm)
Things like having a few days of water and food that may be eaten without fancy cooking. Cell phones in readiness…keep them charged. Consider having boxes or suitcases with spare clothes and sundries ready to haul to your place of safety. I recall one summer when my kids were little. We kept a box of clothes and shoes that were more suited to cold weather sitting right by the basement door all summer. And packed it with us to the basement a couple of times. We were thankful not to have needed those things. But, I didn’t have bottled water and easy food for them. That was more than stupid ignorance; thank goodness again for the storms that went over us.
Last year, in the SW Missouri Ozarks, we were listening to radio at KKOZ in Ava, BigCountry99 in Houston and TV at KOLR10 and KY3 in Springfield, while checking the Internet to track storms and decide if we should head down cellar NOW. I realized that I hadn’t planned for something that is almost as important to me as food. (If it were as important to me as food, maybe I would weigh less).
That something is my computer and files. When I’m grabbing some clean underwear to run to the cellar, I should also be grabbing the laptop and those external harddrives with all my files on them.
Sure, I can plan for some storage online which represents offsite. Think about it; just where in your neighborhood could you have tangible offsite storage if the whole area is tornado bait? So, online storage is the offsite solution. Meanwhile, I will keep backing up on those little external drives for safety and remember to grab my laptop because if I can get it working at all, I can journal the experience to share with you later.
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