Hurricane Helene hit Greenville, South Carolina, early Friday morning on September 27. By seven in the morning, the power went out. As the storm continued up the mountain to Asheville. I was keeping in touch with my children, who lived there by text. As the storm raged on and the water rose in Asheville, the cell towers went out along with the power. It was going to be 36 long hours before I was able to hear from either of my children again. Was I prepared for days without power? Were they prepared? Did we have an emergency communication plan? And where were the shelters if any of us needed to get there? In today's episode, we're going to talk about preparing for an emergency, particularly as an older adult. Extra thought may be required as an older adult to be prepared for an emergency. Welcome to Boomer Banter, the podcast where we have real talk about aging well. My name is Wendy Green, and I am your host. I should have known better. I grew up with hurricanes in Miami, and in a previous life I was director of training for a risk management company. My department provided specialized training to people traveling to remote parts of the world, including what to do in case of a fire or a terrorist attack, or weather events that might affect someone staying in a hotel. But for this storm, I was barely prepared. I had brought in loose items that outside might blow around, but I did not have extra water, extra batteries, or any of the other things we're going to talk about today. So let's dive in. There's another hurricane heading towards Florida. I just saw that it's a category five, so I hope everybody there is listening and is prepared, because rarely are we prepared for an emergency, even when we know how to be a house fire or a fire coming down from a mountain into a canyon where you live, a flood, an earthquake, or tornado, or a hurricane. For some of these emergencies, we do get prior warning. Others we do nothing. And that is one of the reasons why it's so important to be prepared ahead of time. Many episodes of boomer banter talk about preparation to age well. We prepare financially. We make plans for end of life care. We prepare to age as healthfully as possible. Emergency preparedness is another type of preparation that we rarely think about. So let's start with the basics. Number one, what do you need to do for your own personal health? If you have limited mobility? If you are ill, if you live alone, you need to think about your own personal health first. If you have medications that you must take, or if you're tied into an oxygen machine, for example, you have to look at those things and say, what do I need to do to stay resilient from loss of medical supply or loss of power? What do you need to do for your own personal well being? That has to be number one, period. That has to be number one. I live alone. Fortunately, I have no mobility problems. But when the power went out, I'm embarrassed to admit that I struggled to have enough upper body strength to open my garage door. I could have possibly should have opened the garage door ahead of time just in case the power went out. Yes, everything might have gotten wetland, but it is better than having my car trapped in the garage. I don't live near a river, so I was not worried about flood waters sweeping my car away. If I were concerned about flooding, I would have considered leaving. The number two thing beyond your personal health is your personal safety. What are you going to do, depending on what the emergency is, to have your personal safety protected? If you do nothing and you're hurt or injured or, God forbid, killed, there's no coming back from that. And this is where it gets complicated. This is where you have to think about where you live and what you might be susceptible to. Do you live where floods could happen? Fire in the timber around you, hurricanes? Tornadoes? Do you know if there's a chemical manufacturing plant near you or nuclear facilities? You have to know your context to understand what you should be concerned about and be prepared for your safety is the important thing. So let's think about this. If you're in an area prone to hurricanes or tornadoes, look at your house and ask yourself, where's my safe place? The weather service always advises to get into a windowless bathroom and lay in a bathtub. But what if the weather forecast is like what we just experienced here in the upstate of South Carolina and western North Carolina? The forecast for high winds and lots of rain and trees down and flood warnings. Do you have a hardened safe room in your home? With emergency power backup, FEMA recommends what they call safe rooms. These are like concrete block rooms built inside of your house, maybe under your house. These offer near absolute protection, which means the occupants of a safe room built according to FEMA guidance will have a high probability of being protected from injury or death. But most homes don't have safe rooms. It would be good to find out if any hospitals or schools or even neighborhood associations have installed a safe room that you could use. But since most homes don't have their own safe rooms, don't let yourself get into a life threatening situation, particularly if you are lacking mobility, live alone, or are dependent on electricity to keep you alive. The weather service puts out warnings about what is to come. They don't always get it right, but we all know that storms are getting stronger. It's better to err on the side of caution if you don't have a safe room and emergency power backup and the weather service is putting out evacuation warnings. Get out before the storm. Don't be cavalier about it. Get out. So how do you find a shelter or a safe place to go to well in advance? Okay, write this down. The Office of Emergency Management in each state will have information about shelters that are open. Remember that emergency workers may not be able to reach you during the event. You may be stranded or trapped for several hours or even days. Prepare before the emergency event to get out and get to a shelter. Your personal safety, as I said in the beginning, is of the utmost importance. If you need a ride, ask a neighbor, call an Uber, call a taxi. There are ways to get to the shelter. So the next question is, what do you take with you? Well, when I worked for this risk management company, we would advise people to pack what we called go bags. Most of us don't even think about this, but I'm going to tell you what you should put in your go bag. You want to have medicine. If you are supposed to take medicine every day, have your medicine that will last at least several days. In fact, I've heard it suggested that you have enough medication in your go bag to last at least a month. Many people order their pharmaceuticals by mail and you typically get three months supply at one time. What is recommended is that you keep a fresh supply for a month in your go bag. And then when you get your next shipment of three months, switch that one out to put in another month that's freshen. Put an extra pair of eyeglasses or contact lenses and solution in your go bag. Cash. The ATM's and banks may be down because of the emergency event that has happened. Make sure you have cash. Your credit cards may not work. And then in a waterproof container, put your important documents like your health insurance cards, an id, your advance directive, your contact names, along with their phone numbers and their email information. These can all be copies. You don't have to put the originals in there, but you also want to keep the originals in a safe, waterproof and fireproof container in your go bag. You're going to want your battery powered radio and flashlight with extra batteries so if the power goes out, you still will know what's going on around you. You want a charger for your cell phone and preferably a battery backup charger. Sanitary products you might need, including hand sanitizer, disinfectant, wipes, your toothbrush and toothpaste, those kinds of things. If you have a pet food for your pet and a complete change of clothing and a pair of shoes. And then once your go bag is packed, put it in a location where you can grab it and go and get out in a hurry. Probably near your front door is the best place for it. But what if you decide to shelter in place? Let's just say that it's safe for you to stay home and you don't have to evacuate. Like if there was an industrial gas leak, the advice may be to shelter in place. Keep your windows closed, stay in. Or if there's a mass power outage and you find yourself sheltering in place, what should you have on hand besides what might be in your go bag? You want to have water? Stock up on water. Go to Costco, the grocery store, whatever. Get a big case of water. You want a gallon per person per day for several days. You might also want extra water. So if you're in a situation like they're in a Nashville where they have no water, just get gallons of empty water bottles and fill them so you can use them to flush the toilets. You want food? At least a several day supply of non perishable, easily opened food. If it needs to be warmed up, then you're going to need some way to do that. But ideally, you're going to have food that doesn't need to be cooked. Because if you have no power, you may not be able to cook. Have your first aid kit that you should always have in your house anyway, a mask to filter the air if necessary, and warm blankets or a sleeping bag. Okay, so now you have your go bag packed and other emergency supplies and you're feeling really secure, right? Well, imagine that you are fast asleep and your smoke alarm goes off or your CO2 detector goes off. The first thing you are going to do is see if you can get out and then call 911. But if you can't get out, you need to call 911 right away. So it's dark, it's night. Do you have a light by your bed? Maybe a flashlight? Can you find your way out? Is your cell phone by your bed and charged up? It should be. Do you use a wheelchair or walker to get around? What about a hearing aid? Is that by your bed so you can grab it so you can hear when you call 911? Many older people struggle with using their phones. My mother has an iPhone that transcribes voice to text because hearing is a problem. But first she has to connect to the phone. Then she has to be able to see to dial. Then she has to be sure the voice to text is turned on. I did learn though that with the iPhone you can mash the side button five times and it will give you the option to send a call for help. We're talking about emergency situation. Are you going to remember that that option is available? There are two other choices that you might decide to have by your phone, by your bed. Maybe you would have a landline. I know most of us have done away with our landlines, but guess what? A landline will still work if the power goes out because the power comes from the phone company. Of course, if the, if the phone lines are down, it's not going to work. The other thing is, there's a phone that I have found that's called the Jitterbug smart four. I have no relationship with them, but I'm recommending that you look at it, particularly if you are older and you need extra help in a hurry. This phone allows you to call, text, take photos, browse the web, and use maps, all from the touch of a button, just little buttons on the phone. It even has the voice to text transcription. But most importantly, it has an urgent response button at the top of the screen that will connect you with an agent who can assess your situation and get you the help you need. So you don't have to worry about pressing something five times. Turning your phone on, finding the 911, you just press this urgent response. So being prepared means making sure that you can call for help immediately if you need to. So let's talk about communications plans. This is the one that I find the most difficult, that trips us up most of the time. As I said in the beginning, I lost contact with my children for 36 long hours, wondering and worrying if they were all right. When they finally could contact me, it was because they found a spot where they could call out. But just briefly, just enough to say, hey, mom, we're still here. We're okay. But it wasn't because the signal was poor, it was because their phones were running low on power. So what type of plan can you make that will help you stay in touch during an emergency, but also let others know that you're okay and also know that they are okay? It gets complicated. Cell phones need power and cell towers. Computers need Internet and wireless. Without power, you have neither. There are multiple options for a battery powered cell phone charger battery powered, right? These run between 20 and $30. Pick one up. You can use it when you travel or anytime there's an emergency. So that keeps your phone charged. You can also get a power bank for your laptop that, with the right connector, could also charge your cell phone. These run between 45 and $100. Or you could really go for it and get what they call an uninterrupted power supply or ups that will power your modem, your router, your security camera, your phone, and more. These run from 70 to over $100. Look, on Amazon, there are so many choices depending on your needs. In fact, some of these even have built in flashlights. But it is not just you who needs to stay charged up and connected. You need to be able to reach your family members if they were also in harm's way, like I just experienced in the hurricane and my children, they would also need similar devices to stay charged up and connected. And with the cell towers down, we still were having a problem even if the phones were charged up. I'm going to talk about another option in a minute. So you need to have a plan for communicating. And ideally, what you would do is say, okay, I'm gonna check in with you in the morning at 08:00 and then we're gonna check in again in the evening at 05:00 and the reason you want two check ins a day is because, say, you checked in in the morning, everybody was fine, all good. And sometime during the day, something happened. You fell, you got feeling sick, they got hurt. And if you called at five or you reached out for that check in at five and nobody connected, then you would know to call the local authorities, wherever they are, for a wellness check. So talk to your family about scheduling a communication plan where you have these two check inside. And by the way, SMS, which is text messaging, always goes through. Maybe not right away, but eventually it will reach someone. And I saw this proof of this during this storm when I would text with the kids and like I said, 36 hours. But eventually they did get my text and I certainly wasn't calling for a wellness check at that point because the, there was nothing to call. Some people also choose an out of town person as their point of contact. So say I chose my cousin Jenny to be the person we all called. Then when we reached her, she could let us know if she had heard from the other family members and if they were all right. Communication plans are challenging. They are tricky, and your family needs to agree on it. And you need to really have a serious conversation and make sure everybody is on board with what the communication plan is going to be. It's also important for you to make sure you have emergency alerts enabled on your phone. You need to know immediately if there are tornado warnings or fire warnings and what the evacuation instructions might be. If you're unsure if emergency alerts are set up on your phone or how to do this, ask someone to help you set them up. There depends on your phone. Finally I said, you know, if the cell towers are down, you're out of luck, right? But there is another option and that is the satellite communication. I know my kids just bought something called Starlink where it actually acts as a cell tower that goes to the satellite and sends the message back down. So if you choose to buy a satellite communication device, you would still be able to be connected via satellite. I'm not as well versed on that particular technology and if you want more information on that, I would check with your hardware or electronic store. And it's always a great idea to have a generator if you feel like power outages are common in your area. Thank God I had a generator because we were out of power for about seven or eight days and yeah, it would have been pretty difficult too, but you know, difficult's relative, right? So fortunately we were all safe. So priority number one is what your personal health and safety always know. Are you prepared to be resilient if you lose power? If there's a flood, you're going to get out of your house before it hits. If you're not going to leave and seek shelter, make sure you're prepared. Make sure you have plenty of water and canned goods and medicine and batteries to last you for several days. Have a flashlight with fresh batteries. Have a portable radio. Make sure your cell phone is charged. If you're going to evacuate, be prepared. Have your go bag packed. In fact, pack it now. When you get off this podcast, know where your emergency shelters are and have your communication plan worked out. Make sure you have a plan for your pet. Preparation is the key to saving your life. I am going to put some links in the show notes. FEMA has a checklist guideline that you can download from FEMA dot gov. Just search checklist guideline for emergency preparedness and you will find it again. I'm going to put that link in the show notes and there's another site called Ready Dot Gov Kit that gives you a lot of recommendations about the things that you are going to want to put in your go bag or in your emergency preparedness kit. I would love for you to become part of the Boomer banter real talk about aging well, community, you can join us by going to the website Heyboomer bizdev. Click on Connect with us and then you'll know about all the things that we're doing and everything that's coming up. So I hope you will join us. We really are a great community. Next week, I'm looking forward to welcoming Denise Gliwa, host of the bite your tongue podcast, as my guest. We'll dive into the evolving dynamics between parents and their adult children, touching on how our dreams for them may differ from the paths they choose. It's bound to be an insightful and thought provoking conversation, so don't miss that. I hope this episode, although short, has really made you think about getting prepared now and maybe you'll never need it. Wouldn't that be great? But if you do, wouldn't it be great to be prepared? The Boomer Banter podcast is produced by me, Wendy Green, and the music comes from Purple Planet music.