Wednesday, September 4, 2024–9:50 a.m.
-David Crowder, WRGA News-
September is National Preparedness Month, a time for families to take proactive steps to enhance their Ready kits, update their communications plan, and prepare for potential emergencies.
When you think about emergencies, things like tornadoes, hurricanes, and snowstorms come to mind. However, according to Chris Fincher with Floyd County Emergency Management, the most common disaster you are likely to face is a fire.
“Make sure you have a fire extinguisher handy,” he said. “Make sure you talk with your family about emergency plans as far as getting out and that sort of thing. Another one that I like to talk about with the family is making sure that you have identification, passports, and some cash or credit cards in one place so that you know where they’re at. I keep mine in the travel bag so if something happens, I know where to go. I can get there in the dark. I can get there with my eyes closed. I can grab it and I can go.”
Fincher explained the importance of having cash on hand.
“If something bad happens, chances are the cell towers are going to be clogged with traffic and that’s going to reduce your access in the store because their point of service is going to go down,” he said. “I’ll try to have at least $200 to $300 of cash at the very least, that way you can provide for yourself and you can maybe get a place to stay at least for the night while everything kind of starts to come back to some normalcy.”
Preparing for an emergency also includes making sure you have enough food and water.
Fincher also recommends downloading the Floyd County Emergency Management app.
“The app that we have has a link to an Amazon wish list and anybody can go on there and find that wish list,” he said. “It’s got emergency preparedness items on there that may be good for you. One of those that I found was that in case of an emergency, there are reservoirs that go inside of your bathtub and fill it up, and you can use that water in times of emergency. So, it’s things like that. Amazon is full of all sorts of things for emergency preparedness, and also Walmart and our local suppliers.”
You can find download links for the EMA app as well as the CodeRed Weather alerts at floydcountyema.com.
Fincher was a guest Wednesday on WRGA’s First News with Dan Bevels.