Your Survival Protect Yourself from Tornadoes, Earthquakes, Flu Pandemics, and other Disasters

by Arnot, Bob; Cohen, Mark

• ISBN13: 9781578262625
• ISBN10: 1578262623
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-10-09
• Publisher: Hatherleigh Press

Summary

YOUR SURVIVAL The Only Guide You Will Ever Need to Plan for, Cope with, and Recover from Any Disaster Includes 90-Minute DVD An all-in-one resource to ensure your family's physical, mental, and financial survival Fires. Floods. Blizzards. You hear about natural disasters on the evening news, but do you know what disasters may strike your home and family? More to the point, do you know how to survive them? Dr. Bob Arnot, America's most trusted medical correspondent, and Mark Cohen, present a practical handbook that makes planning for a disaster so simple, easy, and inexpensive that there's no longer an excuse to put it off. Complete with checklists to help you stock an emergency food closet, vet your insurance policy, improve the chances your S.O.S. calls and emails will get through when no one else's can, and protect your home and your family against earthquakes, tornadoes, mudslides, terrorist attacks, bird flu...or any other crisis you might face. In addition, the book includes: A 90-minute DVD to help you assess your risks A free one-month subscription to www.yoursurvival.com , featuring signups for weather alerts, secure storage for important documents, and a virtual meeting place to find your loved ones after a disaster Gripping tales from survivors who know first-hand the most common mistakes people make With advice from survivors and experts alike,Your Survivalis a vital investment in your family's future.

Author Biography

Bob Arnot is one of the most trusted names in health and foreign reporting and a globetrotting humanitarian with dozens of disaster zones stamped in his passport. As chief medical correspondent for CBS and NBC, and board member for Save the Children, Dr. Bob has reported on war in Iraq, AIDS in Botswana, and tended to the victims of earthquakes, floods, and pandemics in Armenia, Turkey, and Japan. He is also the best-selling author of the Breast Cancer Prevention Handbook, as well as the star of “Dr. Danger,” a new series on INHD.

Mark Cohen is a veteran journalist who has written and edited for Men’s Journal, GQ, and the New York Times and Washington Post magazines, among other publications.

Table of Contents

Forward

Introduction About This Guide Yoursurvival.com Your SurvivalÖList Cherrypicking Info Icons Used in This Guide

Identifying Your Risks No One's Completely Safe Location Location Location A Word About Flood Maps Special Report: Bird Flu and You

Planning Ahead Taking Stock

Stocking Up Food & Sundries Water Gas

Grill Portable Heater

Other Appliances Light Batteries Radio Plastic

Sheeting and Duct Tape Hose and Ladder

Gas Shut-Off Wrench Stocking Your Emergency

Medicine Kit Backing Up Getting

Your Affairs in Order Sizing Up

Your Insurance Disaster-Proofing

Your Home Devising

Your Communications Plan Pets Assembling

Your "Bug-Out" Bags The Bugged-Out SUV Plotting

Your Escape Route Maintenance

Stay or Go? Six Rules to Live By If You Go If You Stay

Weathering the Storm

The 30-Second Guide to Disaster Physics Your Disaster-by-Disaster

Drill Tornadoes Hurricanes and Floods Earthquakes Landslides Chemical Clouds Heat Waves

Immediate Aftermath

Practicalities First Managing

Your Water Supply

Getting Help From FEMA

Notifying Your Insurance Company

The Stages of Disaster Grief Getting Unstuck

Rebuilding Staying on Your Insurer

Dealing With Your Mortgage Company

Hiring a Contractor

Getting the IRS to Help

Solving the Government Loan Puzzle

Conclusion

Recommended Products

Glossary of Terms

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction

You never think a disaster will happen to you. Kathy Hebert, a 46-year-old physician and public health analyst certainly didn’t. The longtime New Orleans resident always thought that keeping supplies and extra cash on hand, making copies of vital records, and buying supplemental insurance for rare events like earthquakes or floods were things that only “worrywarts” did.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit. Now, more than a year after the disaster, Hebert and her husband are camping out with a toaster on the second floor of what used to be their house. The first floor, which was inundated by five feet of water from the 17th Street Canal, had to be taken down clear to the studs; Hebert spends hours each week searching for a contractor who’s not too busy to put up walls – which for now the Heberts must pay for out of their own savings.

“When the order came to evacuate we only had a couple of hours to get out,” she recalls. “We had two big plastic totes stuffed with our important papers and other valuables, like our wedding video, and we put them up on our kitchen counters. So we figured at least those things would stay dry. Unfortunately, we didn’t count on the fact that in five feet of water plastic totes slide off counters and topple open! That was really hard. My father died eight years ago, and that was the only video I had of him. Now I just want to grab people by the neck and tell them, ‘Don’t put your faith in plastic totes!’ You have to make sure stuff like that is in order and in one place so you can take it with you.”

Kathy’s story is exactly the point of the Your Survival™ Disaster Planning, Response, and Recovery Program. You might call it our attempt to “grab you by the neck” (in the nicest possible way of course), to get you thinking about all the things that thousands of people never do. To help, we enlisted the country’s leading disaster preparedness experts, including emergency management officials, weather forecasters, physicians, engineers, accountants, insurance analysts, and grief counselors. We also interviewed dozens of survivors from all across the country. Smart, hardworking people just like you, who are still drying out from Hurricane Katrina and the recent flooding in the Northeast, people who have watched their houses slide down cliffs during earthquakes in Los Angeles, run from wildfires in San Diego, and cowered inside closets as F5 tornadoes ripped apart their Oklahoma homes. They all agreed to tell their stories because they have some hard lessons to share, and because they understand two important truths about disasters: First, these catastrophes can, and do, happen to anyone, regardless of income or geography. Second, at a time when it’s increasingly clear that government is overmatched by the cost and coordination of recovery efforts, it’s a big mistake to count on someone else to take care of these issues for you.

“A lot of people in this country have this idea that Bruce Willis is going to jump out of a tank, and suddenly all these supplies are going to start pouring in to help them put their lives back together,” says Hebert. “Well, it doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy that only lives in Hollywood. When something like this happens, every family better have it together and know how to take responsibility for themselves.”

We’re not trying to scare you with statements like these or get you to take up residence with your spouse and children in a bunker somewhere with a two-year supply of Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs). We just think it makes sense to do a little advance planning now that can save you plenty of stress and heartache later.

Disasters don’t need to devastate your family. Especially not if you have the right type of insurance, organize your most vital possessions, and prep with the rest of the quick and easy info outlined in Your Survival™.

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Excerpted from Your Survival: The Complete Resource for Disaster Planning and Recovery by Bob Arnot, Mark Cohen
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.