Where will your family be when disaster strikes? They could be anywhere – at home, at work, at school, in the car. How will you find each other? Will you know if your children are safe? Take the #PrepareKS challenge and develop your family communication plan.
Learn more as K-State climatologist Mary Knapp describes the challenge in her August 24, 2015 Weather Wonders program.
The online challenge kicks off on September 1. Register now!
Just like having a working smoke detector, preparing for the unexpected in other ways makes sense. Register now for the 2015 Prepare Kansas online challenge and learn how to plan ahead for the most common emergencies we experience in Kansas – temperature extremes including drought, tornadoes, floods, and fire.
A little work now can make recovering less difficult. We’ve broken the program down to a few activities to do each week, which makes it easier than if you’re trying to do many activities from a long list. Working on each activity gives families an opportunity to not only work together on becoming better prepared, but can spark conversations about preparedness in general and the best ways to handle future emergencies.
Prepare Kansas is an annual online preparedness challenge from K-State Research and Extension designed to help individuals and families be better prepared ahead of disasters which can make recovery easier. The program focuses on a few activities every week during September. Activities vary each year.
Tornadoes are one of the six most common hazards. Other common hazards include earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and winter storms.
Although they can occur at any time of the year, tornadoes most often occur during the spring and summer. They are most likely to hit between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. but they can — and do — occur at all hours of they day and night.
As shown below, three Kansas counties experienced 4-7 F3 or EF3 or greater tornadoes between 1996 and 2013. Many others experienced 1 – 3. Click on the graphic below to learn how to prepare for a tornado.
Most of us probably spend the majority of our waking hours away from home, at least on Monday through Friday. That means that when a disaster strikes family members are likely to be scattered throughout the community at school, work, or other activities.
Making a plan now for how you will communicate with one another in different situations is important. In the Helpful Links section at the right is an example of a family communication plan for parents and children. Here is another example of a family communication plan.
Regardless of the format you use for your family communication plan, be sure everyone in your family knows the plan. FEMA provides additional family communication tips here.
