Every household should put together an emergency kit.

• A three-day supply of drinking water (one gallon per person, per day) and food you don’t have to refrigerate or cook
• First aid supplies
• A portable NOAA weather radio
• A wrench and other basic tools
• A flashlight
• Work gloves
• Emergency cooking equipment
• Portable lanterns
• Fresh batteries for each piece of equipment
• Clothing; blankets
• Baby items
• Prescription medications
• Extra car and house keys
• Extra eyeglasses
• Credit cards and cash
• Important documents, including insurance policies.
• Cell phone batteries and a charger.

Become familiar with your community’s severe weather warning system. Make certain every person in your family knows what to do when severe weather threatens.
Where you live, it may not be weather that threatens but a disaster like wildfire instead.  Everyone should study their community’s disaster preparedness plans and create a family plan.  It is also important to learn about the plans of your workplace, children’s schools or day care centers.

• Decide in advance where you will take shelter.
• Identify escape routes from your home and neighborhood.
• Designate an emergency meeting place for your family to reunite if you become separated.
• Establish a contact point to communicate with concerned relatives.
• Take video and photographs of the contents of your home and the exterior.

In a high wind event:

• Move anything in your yard that can become flying debris inside your house or garage before a storm strikes.
  • If a tornado threatens, do this only if authorities have announced a tornado “watch.”
  • If authorities have announced a tornado “warning,” leave it all alone and go immediately to your designated shelter.
    • If your home has no storm cellar or in-residence “safe” room and you have no time to get to a community shelter, head to the centermost part of your basement or home — away from windows and preferably under something sturdy like a workbench or staircase.
• Don’t open your windows in high winds. You won’t save the house, as once thought, and you may actually make things worse by giving wind and rain a chance to get inside.

TIP: Don’t try to ride out a high wind event in a manufactured home. Even manufactured homes with tie-downs overturn in these storms because they have light frames and offer winds a large surface area to push against. In addition, their exteriors are vulnerable to high winds and wind-borne debris.
In case of wildfire, if you have time before you evacuate:

• Turn off valve to main gas line.
• Turn on a light in each room.
• Put lawn sprinklers on the roof and turn them on if the fire approaches.
• Open the chimney flume.

Courtesy www.disastersafety.org