On a perfectly normal afternoon I was working at my desk when I smelled smoke. At first I thought perhaps my wife was cooking dinner and the smell was permeating through the house, but when the odor grew stronger I decided to check it out. Imagine my surprise when opening the door to my office revealed a cloud of black smoke rolling up the basement stairs.
I rushed back inside my office to grab the essentials and then raced through the garage with my laptop in one hand and my cell phone in the other, breathlessly panting our address to the emergency dispatcher while joining my wife who was in the front yard with the dog. She joined me and I explained what was happening as we waited for help to arrive. Within just a few minutes’ time, fire engines swarmed our home with neighbors close behind wondering about the commotion.
It turned out that the washing machine, which was at least a couple of decades old, had caught fire. The firefighters extinguished it before any real harm came to our home, but the chief frowned at the laptop under my arm. His glare told me exactly what he was thinking – people are more important than things, and running back into my office was a huge no-no. The laundry room wasn’t the only thing getting an overhaul. While my impromptu emergency plan had priorities, they were all the wrong ones.
After a chat with the local fire department and talking to fellow insurance professionals, I sat down with my wife and we devoted the evening to the long overdue task of creating a new family emergency plan. My laptop was a huge help! Along with implementing tips from www.itpaystobeprepared.com, I plugged all of our technological gadgets into Evernote, a family of products that helps you remember things and syncs with almost any technological gadget you use. While many are iThing only, a lot of the apps also work for Android devices. Some of the smart phone apps that helped our family prepare for disaster situations are:
- Scanning – Apps like DocScanner, Droid Scan, and CamScanner turn your smart phone into a portable scanner that saves pictures of documents to Evernote. This is especially helpful if you don’t have access to a scanner or if you’re trying to save information during a disaster without resources such as electricity.
- Calendar – Meshin Recall is an app that lets you create, access, and share your notes straight from your calendar. This is helpful for reminding your family about emergency practice drills and other communications related to disaster planning. Meanwhile, Small Brother and reQall are two reminder apps that sync with Evernote.
- Notetaking – Apps such as PostEver and Wonderful Days help because they take note taking to the next level, with features such as capturing a variety of mediums, like text and photos, for an entire day and compiling them into a single Evernote entry. WhiteBoard is a good app to have for family meetings because it captures and shares discussions before sending them to Evernote.
- Locator – My personal favorite is Car Locator for Android. Whenever you save your location in Car Locator, a geo-tagged note is saved in your Evernote account. Later you can refer back to it and get the distance from your current location as well as the directions to that spot. Every member of your family can save your emergency meeting place using this app. In the event of a disaster if they do become separated, then as long as they have cell phone coverage, they will have an escape route at their fingertips.
Although he probably wasn’t talking about a hurricane or a tornado, college football coach Joe Paterno was completely right when he said, “The minute you think you’ve got it made, disaster is just around the corner.” Not every disaster is predictable, and not every disaster is caused by Mother Nature. Creating a family emergency plan increases your family’s chances of surviving any catastrophic situation, and that’s what’s really important.
About the author: Canadian resident Duncan Morrison’s background of more than 16 years in the insurance industry provides him a unique perspective about disaster situations. This perspective combined with his own firsthand experiences with extreme seasonal weather in his native Edmonton were the inspiration for his website, It Pays to Be Prepared, where he offers advice for staying safe during a natural catastrophe. From how to create emergency survival kits to preparing a home office for potential disasters, the reviews and articles provide useful tips for almost any situation imaginable. When Duncan isn’t looking for new ways to keep safe, he enjoys spending time with his wife of seven years and their dog, Sammy.
Photo credit: Cheon Fong Liew