5 Things You Should Have at Home for Emergencies

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Emergencies come in a variety of forms, and they are almost always unexpected. This means that you have to plan ahead in case your family requires quick thinking to solve a problem. From hurricanes and tornadoes to health crises, planning for emergency care is essential to maintaining a highly functional home. Read on to learn about homeowner essentials that can give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’re prepared for any eventuality.

1. First Aid Kit

Every home should have some rudimentary medical equipment on standby. This includes hydrogen peroxide (an antiseptic liquid that’s incredibly cheap and in plentiful supply at pharmacies, Walmart, and your local supermarket), bandages, over the counter pain medication, and some of the more fringe items like super glue and duct tape. Additionally, if your family includes members with severe allergies, keeping an Epi-Pen or anti-allergen medication could be the difference between life-saving attention and unspeakable tragedy. Keeping these items in an easily accessible location in the home is the best way to combat emergency medical situations like a deep wound while chopping vegetables for dinner or a child’s head injury after falling off a chair or colliding with an edge of the countertop.

2. Extra Phone and Additional Charger

An emergency can happen in the blink of an eye. Car accidents, infants falling into swimming pools, and severe burns from the oven or stove take seconds to unfold, and the instant these accidents occur you must be ready to act. This includes calling for help in many circumstances. A phone that is ready to use is an essential tool in preparing for the worst. As well, you must keep backup chargers handy in case you are forced to evacuate the home without warning (and therefore the ability to plug your cell phone in for a charge).

3. Generator Power for the Home

Power outages occur as a result of any number of failures along the power grid or lines that flow outward into neighborhoods and across cities. If you live in an area that is prone to natural disasters – and most of us do – then having the freedom to power your home’s facilities with a generator while the main power is cut can provide your family with precious hours of reprieve. A whole home standby generator is a great addition to homes that find themselves in the paths of hurricanes, earthquakes, or monstrous snowstorms. These disasters can knock out power to the entire home for days or weeks at a time, leaving your indoor air to revert to the climate’s whims and your freezer and refrigerator to rot or defrost the precious meals that they protect. There are many types of generators, so make sure you’re choosing the generator that’s will keep your entire house powered. Furthermore, a generator certainly makes the list of unique gift ideas for Christmas.

4. Flashlights and Candles

Lighting devices are essential during a power outage. While a generator is the best option for keeping your home lit and your appliances powered, this isn’t always feasible. In the event of a long outage, you might outrun the supply of gasoline or propane required to run a home generator. Similarly, depending on where you keep this equipment, you may require flashlight power to reach and engage the backup power itself. Keeping these simpler lighting devices on hand is a great way to ensure redundancy in the event of a more severe outage.

5. Water

Water is essential. There’s no way around this necessity, so keeping bottled water in the home or having a strategy to fill containers during an emergency of inclement weather is crucial to providing long term relief for you and your family. Many Floridians know that during hurricane events the best way to keep the family hydrated is to fill the bathtub before the storm strikes land. This way you will have a large stockpile of additional water resources in the event that your bottled supply runs dry before life returns to normalcy.

Planning for emergencies takes some forethought. But organizing the facilities in your home to counteract the disruptions is essential to maintaining a prepared household.