# 4856
Today marks the first day of National Preparedness Month, a national drive to get Americans better prepared to deal with disasters and emergencies.
As I write this, portions of the Eastern Seaboard are under a Hurricane watch, and in the first eight months of the year, 65 Major Disasters have been declared in this country.
Add to that the hundreds of thousands of smaller emergencies and disasters that strike Americans every year (household accidents, house fires, localized storm damage, etc), and the need to be prepared is great.
As an NPM10 coalition member, interspersed with my regular coverage of influenza and emerging infectious diseases, I plan to run dozens of preparedness-centric posts over the next 30 days.
Some will be repeats of older essays I’ve done, a few will be new, while others will lead you to important preparedness information online.
On twitter, look for the hash tag #NPM10 to follow online announcements about National Preparedness Month.
Since Ready.gov urges everyone to:
I’ll try to align my posts to those goals.
And since the first step is GET A KIT, an appropriate place to start is Ready.gov’s recommendations for a basic emergency kit. You can download & print this list by clicking the images or using this link.
Of course, this is just a basic list. Nothing says you can’t improve upon it, go for a week’s worth of supplies . . . or even two.
But this is an excellent place to start (assuming you haven’t already), and represents the minimum level of emergency supplies each household should strive to keep on hand.
And for those of you who can do better - you will be in a position to help your friends, relatives, and neighbors should a disaster strike.
Which makes preparing not only a good thing to do for your family . . . . but the right thing to do for your community as well.
