Before the Storm

Hi! It’s Jilly. Everyone here is freaking out about the Hurricane Sandy, which is on its way. We live in the Southern Tier of NY, about 3 1/2 hours northwest of NYC, and we are expected to have a lot of rain, high winds, and flooding. There was a storm last September that caused a lot of damage due to flooding and high winds. This storm is predicted to be even worse than that storm was.

source

We feel fairly prepared, but stopped by the store on Saturday to pick up a few things just in case, and this is what we found.

No flashlights.

No batteries.

No lanterns or camp stoves.

Few diapers.

No eggs.

No water.

No bread.

No bananas. Other produce running low.

These signs seemed to be placed all over the store!   

It is so crazy! Guys…seriously…GET YOUR 72 HOUR KITS TOGETHER AND YOUR FOOD STORAGE!! I don’t usually use the caps lock, but this is important! We had friends driving all over town looking for batteries because every store was sold out. All the stores are out of basic necessities. If this is how bad things are before a predicted storm (a super monster storm, yes, but it hasn’t hit yet), then how bad will it be if there is an even bigger disaster?!

 

For those of you who need it, here is a link to the Red Cross’s Flood Safety Checklist. For those of you who need to figure out what you need to do to get prepared for whatever may happen, here’s a link to Provident Living to help you out. To learn how to make a 72 hr kit, including a checklist and video, go here.

 

While looking at all this stuff I found a cool website called Stock Up Food. You can plug in what you already have and it will tell you how much you still need in which categories to meet your food storage goals. It saves the foods you add, so it’s a nice way to keep track of what you have, too. You can check out their blog here.

 

Hopefully things won’t be too bad, but we’ll see. I’m kinda nervous!! My brother-in-law is a lineman (works on power lines), and they sent him and bunch of other lineman out East all the way from Oregon in preparation for the power outages from the storm! Wish us luck and keep everyone on the East Coast in your prayers!