hurricanes and 3-day disaster preparedness

In the lead up to Hurricane Helene the Governor of Georgia urged his citizens to have 3-days of disaster preparedness. This is after all, the national preparedness message from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

But, but, but…three days is not enough for a hurricane! Hurricanes, even those with a much smaller footprint than Helene, cover extremely wide geographic areas. The issue here is windspeed and then what those winds do to the trees in a community that then impact power lines.

When a hurricane is being forecasted, there is a national system for moving power crews into the areas that are potentially going to be impacted by power outages caused by the storm. However, there is a limited number of power crews and they can’t be everywhere at once. Therefore, it could be several weeks before power is restored to every neighborhood when you have a multi-state event happening all at once.  

Rethink how long you need to be prepared to be without electrical power and factor that into your disaster preparedness equation—which includes the number of days you will be on your own.