Establishing a family emergency plan is one of the best ways to stay ahead of the weather and the havoc it can wreak.

It’s great if your family does have an emergency plan in place, but be sure to regularly discuss and review it when the weather seasons change so that everyone is on the same page and knows exactly what to do.

If you’ve not yet created a family emergency plan, we’ve listed some considerations for creating that plan:

1. How will emergency alerts and warnings be received?

Thanks to today’s technologies, emergency alerts, and warnings are “at our fingertips” through the use of smartphones equipped with a weather app or Google to quickly give emergency alerts, which provides you with valuable time in severe weather situations. If there is no smartphone available, warnings, and alerts are also still broadcast over the radio, and television.

2. What type of storm shelter do you have?

Determine where you will take shelter if you live in an area where tornadoes are common, and you have no basement. In that situation, you’ll want to be in the lowest part of your home in an interior room that is away from corners, windows, doors, and outside walls. Tornadoes aren’t the only weather situation that require a form of storm shelter, and you can get more information about those situations that call for them by visiting ready.gov.

3. What is our evacuation route?

When faced with evacuation as a result of hurricanes, flooding or fires, which can quickly force you out of your home, you should always have routes mapped out that can serve as an evacuation route. It’s wise to have multiple routes in the event that one is impassable, and make sure you have found places to stay with your pets along the way if you have furry family members to evacuate with.

4. How will the family stay in touch?

Your family needs to stay connected and it is easy to rely on cell phones for that purpose, but in a severe weather situation that may not be the way to stay in contact with each other. Weather can damage cell towers and cause power outages, phones could be lost or left behind, and batteries will die when there is no power to recharge them.

Your family needs an emergency communication plan, as well as a pre-arranged safe meeting place so that you can all meet there if separated.

If a storm does cause damage to your home or business, don’t hesitate to call your friends at SERVPRO of McAllen to get the cleanup & restoration process started.