• Behavioral Issues
• Child Care
• Cleaning Up After a Storm
• Communication
• Deciding To Stay Or Go
• Evacuation Shelters
• First Aid & Medical
• Flood Center
• Food and Water
• Help the Relief Effort
• Insurance Center
• Lighting & Power
• Pet Care
• Preparing Your Home
• Special Needs
• Storms Explained

Purchasing Additional Phones and Preparing Communications for a Hurricane

 

Corded Phones: Make Sure to Have One of These

• Make sure that you purchase a “Hurricane Phone.” This is a traditional phone that should be part of your disaster supply kit. It will be a corded phone, which has the ability to be used with or without power. If you have a cordless phone, the base of it will require commercial electricity and cannot be used in a power outage.
• Also, make sure that your corded phone has a long wire that connects the telephone to the jack. This way, when a disaster threatens, you can bring the telephone into your safe room.

 

Additional Communication Tools and Information

• Check if your home and business are equipped with proper telephone services to re-route communications in the event of a disaster. Services like voice mail and call forwarding are available and may prove very helpful.
• You may want to purchase additional cell phones or prepaid phones for emergencies. They can be stored in your safe room or emergency supply kit.
• Consider downloading new tools on cell phones that will enable you to get the latest emergency information.
• Before a disaster, make sure to adequately charge your cellular phones, and that additional batteries for cell phones and car chargers are onhand.

 

Emergency Contacts

• Make sure that your emergency contacts are stored in each one of your family’s cellular phones. In addition, your family members should have the home, work, and cell phone numbers of other family members, friends, co-workers, and employers who they will need to communicate with post-disaster.
• Designate multiple emergency contacts, making sure that at least one is as an out-of-town family member or friend. This person will be a central contact person, and everyone in the family should be instructed to communicate with this person should disaster strike. For more information about emergency contacts, visit our articles, "Creating Emergency Contacts" and “Your Family Disaster Plan.”