Planning On How To Reconnect With Family

When disaster strikes there's no guarantee that you'll be home with your family. Or even if you are home, your loved ones could be elsewhere.

That however doesn't mean that you should be separated forever but in order to find your family or friends you can't afford to lose, you need to have plans on how you can contact or find them in case of an emergency.

Knowing what to do should you get separated would ensure you won't take unnecessary risks as you attempt to find your loved ones. That's why you always must have a plan on how you will reconnect with your family.

 

We always declared a place that we would meet or leave a message (if the place became unsafe) for our loved ones. This is a very important step I have learned. I saw so many people during Hurricane Katrina desperately searching for loved ones that they could not get in touch with at all. Some of them were separated for weeks because of evacuations, phones being lost/damaged/inoperable. It is also good to have an outside relative or friend that is not in the immediate area that will also serve as a common point of contact that everyone can call that can connect you all together. As I said earlier, sometimes your designated local meeting spot may be dangerous or inaccessible during a natural disaster.

 

I think that in order to be prepared for a disaster and be able to reconnect with loved ones that you should all plan together. If you all can agree on a number of safe havens and places to meet up at then you will eliminate the long quest to find each other that will have to follow the event.

 

Fortunately, almost everyone in my family is balls terrible. My sister has been good to me, but she would probably bother the living hell out of me in a survival situation to be perfectly blunt.

My pops & mams are long estranged, wouldn't care. As for friends, we think alike, stuff happens and we'd have a plan. If one of us doesn't make it, hey, coulda been dead years ago anyways.

 

It's good to have two locations picked out to meet up if things get bad and a can of spray paint to mark something to show that you were there if location is unsafe so they know to move on to the next location. Lately we been practicing using stickers to mark hidden communications between us. Such as a sticker on a mailbox to show that a letter is taped inside. Or spray paint among trash to indicate that a letter may be in a empty potato chip bag or bottle.

 

Dang, what are you - a spy? When does one need to do these things? I can't even imagine using these techniques in a disaster - where am I gonna get stickers in a tornado? Just kidding.