Weather Safety is Home Safety

Protect Your Family When Mother Nature Strikes

Home safety measures cover a wide range of things including: security issues, home hazards, health and medical risks, and weather safety. Weather is something you have very little control over, but how your family responds and the safeguards you have in place are within your control.

Hurricane and Tornado Safety

In hurricane and tornado prone areas of the country consider the low-tech and high-tech steps you can take to minimize damages and risk of harm to family and property:

Low-tech:

• Cover doors and windows with plywood in the event of hurricanes
• Secure anything that can be blown away or caught in flood waters
• Warn children to stay away from downed power lines or downed trees that could have powerlines caught in branches.

High-Tech:

• Secure your home with security doors, such as steel screen doors, security storm doors and tough front entry doors. You’ll find security doors manufactured in a variety of durable materials and coated with decorative paints and finishes. Security doors may be made to be vandal-proof as well as impact-resistant.
• Security windows may be made of laminated glass designed to withstand intense impacts or blasts or coated with shatter-resistant coatings.
• Install a flood detector that emits an alarm when water is detected. This type of home security device is also valuable to detecting plumbing and appliance leaks.

Thunder and Lightning Storms

Lightning can be very dangerous if not taken as a serious threat to your home and family’s safety:

• Educate children on the dangers of lightning.
• Remove dead overhead tree limbs that could fall on your home in high wind and rain.
• Install a lightning rod, weathervane or other type of outdoor lightning arrestor.
• Make sure your electronic components inside your home, including computer, television and stereo equipment are all plugged into a surge protector.
• Install new or inspect and test existing smoke and fire alarms. Lightning strikes have been known to cause fire.

In some home monitored security systems you may expand devices to include smoke and fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.