Family Preparation & Survival Guide

When a disaster strikes, we look forward to getting back to our normal way of life.  But most of us have this common question in mind—how? It’s hard to put things back to the way they were used to especially if we don’t know where to begin with.

With that in mind, it is ideal to have a disaster recovery plan on hand. Having this one to guide us in every step of the way in rebuilding and starting a new life could help in achieving a speedy and effective recovery from life’s unexpected challenges.

With all kinds of disasters unfolding in different countries like the devastating earthquake in China and the recent cyclone in Myanmar both have taken so many precious lives and yet, there are still a lot of people who insists that there’s no way for them to be prepared when situations like this happens. But I believe the opposite, in any unexpected calamity it’s a very huge advantage that we know how to respond and deal with these incidents properly.

There are so many ways to equip ourselves with the right information in surviving all forms of disasters. Having the right knowledge in emergency survival information, could mean a lot of difference in saving our lives and others too.

    I remember when I was a child that there were different seasons and a slow transition between each one.  I remember days and days of nothing but slow & steady rain.  I remember the Summer days that you could bear to be outside all day long.  I remember that during Winter the cold would last for months.  I remember that there was snow every year.

    Today, I live in the same town that I grew up in and things are not the same as when I was a child.  We haven’t had a 5 or 6 inch snow in years.  The last snow we had this past year was completely gone in 24 hours.  That was the first 5 inch snow that we had here in over 18 years.  The only other winter accumulation we have had is either sleet or freezing rain.  Summers are just unbearable with 110 to 115 degree days.  That is without the heat index!  The seasons go straight from Summer to Winter and straight from Winter to Summer.  Rain during Summer is getting scarcer & scarcer.  The grass dies every Summer, trees start losing their leaves from lack of rain, ponds dry up, lakes’ shoreline receeds down to mere puddles, & creeks and rivers dry up to mere trickles.

     Wake Up Everybody!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  We as a human race have to change our ways of living and ways of getting energy, NOW!  If we all band together and try to make a change, IT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE! 

     The recent natural disaster in Myanmar was horrible.  I wish The Southern Family Survival Guide could have helped them in time.  With over 15 thousand dead and over 44 thousand still missing, this natural disaster will clearly go down in the books as one of Mother Nature’s worst killers.  There have been higher death tolls from cyclones in the past and I’m sure there will be natural disasters with high death tolls in the future.

     Cyclone is the name for the type of storm that we have in the U.S. called a hurricane.  Cyclones are not considered a cyclone until they have wind speeds of over 110 km/h or 75 MPH.  Cyclones form only in tropical regions.  Cyclones produce extremely heavy amounts of rainfall, huge storm surges, and intense wind speeds. 

     The best way to prepare for a hurricane, typhoon, or cyclone is to leave ahead of time!  At The Southern Family Survival Guide we want to inform everyone on natural disaster preparation.

One of the keys to emergency preparedness is to have a reliable cell phone that has the same capabilities as a laptop or PC.  The best phone for this is the Apple iPhone.  The device is on the steep side, retailing at $399, but you can bypass this by heading to the company’s website and purchasing a refurbished iPhone for less. 

Apple’s refurbished products are typically floor models that are sent back to the manufacturer, fixed up and resold as a slightly used product.  The unfortunate part is that it’s first-come-first-serve, so if you don’t see one right away, keep checking back.  Once you get the phone, you’ll be able to download survival guides on it and make sure that it’s something you’ll always have.

Tornado conditions are caused when different temperatures and humidity meet to form thunderclouds.  The warm southern winds try to rise, but the cold northern air blocks them. This clash causes the warm, trapped air to rotate horizontally between the two air masses.  At the same time, the sun heats the earth below, warming more air that continues to try and rise. Finally, the rising warm wind becomes strong enough to force itself up through the colder air layer.

When this occurs, the cold air on top begins to sink, sending the rising warm wind spinning upward. The warm winds rotate faster and faster in a high column.  When the updraft is strong, the column can rise to heights of 10 miles or more, twisting at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour.  The rotating winds produce strong storm clouds about 70,000 feet high, sometimes spreading 10 miles wide.

This storm system may stay intact for several hours, at which point its thunderclouds are known as supercells. These storm clouds can send down an inch of rain in a mere ten minutes or shower the ground with baseball-sized hailstones.  Supercells can accumulate into huge clusters, forming a line almost 100 miles long, which can then develop into mesocyclones.

Unfortunately, this natural phenomenon can have devastating and tragic results, so it’s important that disaster preparedness is crucial.  If there’s a tornado alert in your area, always have a plan for you and your family.

     This last Friday was an eventful one for my family and I.  That night just happened to be “Family Movie Night”.  Every person in my family was just getting home from work, babysitter, errands, & Pizza Hut & movie store when we got the news that a tornado was spotted in our general area.  I had already heard about the tornado about 40 miles West of us and knew it would be a while before that storm front would be in our area.

     The tornado sirens were blaring in the distance.  The Satelite TV in our home wasn’t working because of the high winds so we had our radio dialed in to the local radio station.  Much to my surprise, a tornado really had been spotted in our area.  I went outside as fast as I could to see what the clouds were doing.  I got about 75 yards away from our house so I could see above the trees.  THERE IT WAS !!!  The massive twister was about 1 to 1 1/2 miles away from my house.  It was moving in a Northeast direction not at a very fast speed. The way that twister was moving with the wind blowing in the direction that it was, I knew that we were not in danger from that twister.  I suddenly noticed that the wind quit blowing my hair.  My shirt was trying to float up and I could hear a real low pitched sound like a the sound a wind makes when it comes in through a small crack the wall or door.  I looked up and almost directly over my head I saw the clouds spinning in a circular motion with a hole in the center of them and the clear blue skies above the storm shining through. 

     I headed back toward the house as fast as I could.  My neighbor yelled out at me and I looked at him.  He was pointing towards the Northeast from us.  There were 3 other sets of spinning cloud masses.  The clouds would start reaching for the ground and then go back up.  Those three funnel clouds kept doing that until they disappeared into the distance.

     Tornados are a natural disaster that are completely unpredictable about where they will touch down.  The meteorologists may know when they are coming and where the chances are the highest to have a tornado but no person will be able to tell you exactly where they will touch down.  When you hear the warnings, seek appropiate shelter.