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When To Stay

When a disaster threatens, don’t stay behind to protect your property. With every major storm that hits, people are killed because they stayed to ride out the storm and protect the house. Your presence is not going to hold back the flood or keep the roof on. If you are worried about theft or looting, take your small valuables with you and hope the authorities will prevent looting. If there is looting in your neighborhood, you don’t want to be the lone vigilante. You are as likely to end up scaring off a rescuer as a thief. Besides, is your television set really worth losing your life over?

Listen to official notices on the radio or television. If an evacuation is called for your area, get out. Don’t quibble about whether it is voluntary or mandatory. If you leave early, you can prepare your house and your family and minimize problems. If the storm goes elsewhere or the flood doesn’t happen, all you have lost is some time.

On the other hand, if you live fifty miles inland on high ground in a brick house, you probably don’t need to evacuate before a hurricane. Make your preparations and hunker down. You don’t need to evacuate if you have adequate shelter, food, water, medicine, clothing, waste disposal, and a way to get out if things go bad.

Stay in the safest and best prepared building. If this is your house, great. If you live in a trailer, but your brother has a brick house down the road, work with your brother to make his house a good shelter for both your families. The following section of the book is about what you need and how to make things work during a disaster.

Leave if you don’t have all
you need for health and safety