Hi Jelly! As a father to two young ones myself, let me offer some advice. Just a few extra tips for parents of young kids in disaster situations:
Buy canned milk! Lots of it. I wouldnt have made it through Hurricane Isabel without canned milk. Kids get cranky without milk, cereal, and all that.
I used to figure on three days in a disaster, now I plan for two weeks.
Kids need distractions. Rathole a few toys so they will have something new to distract them if you are deprived of services for a long time. If you dont, the kids will drive you and your wife to each others throats..LOL
If it is a hurricane, keep your kids inside for at least three days, or until you know there is nothing dangerous in the yard they can get hurt on, like downed power lines, unstable trees, or other things.
My son ran into a stick that was protruding from the ground-it had been driven into the ground by the hurricane at an angle like a pungee stick- luckily he was not hurt.
Be careful of people and merchants price gouging and profiteering from the disaster. People were paying 30,000 dollars to have 1 tree removed out here. It was ridiculous. Some people almost rioted in a few places.
If you lose power for a long time, distribution centers run out of food, and you cant find a thing on store shelves because the stock spoils.
Cook your food before it spoils, and keep it on ice. You can keep your freezer stock longer by doing that if it looks like you wont have power for a while.
I could go on and on, but a lot of it depends on the situation. Best advice is to watch your kids day by day and find way to make them comfortable if it is a long term thing. That saves stress on you and the wife in the long run.
IN WASHINGTON DC:
Police, Fire Dispatch System Loses Power
911 Calls May Be Delayed
POSTED: 5:10 pm EDT May 25, 2004
UPDATED: 7:48 pm EDT May 25, 2004
WASHINGTON -- Police officers, firefighters and paramedics in D.C. are working around a problem with their radio dispatch system.
Officers say people can still call into the 911 system, and emergency crews will respond. However, the response time may be a little longer than normal.
A police representative said the city radio system, which is located in Northwest D.c., lost power at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Crews are trying to restore power. In the meantime, the different emergency agencies are operating on only a few channels. That means many calls for emergency help are behind given to officers by hand, and dispatchers can't oversee where the officers are.
It is not yet known when the system will be fully functional again. Crews said they have been restoring some of the channels throughout the afternoon.
http://www.nbc4.com/news/3345514/detail.html
Great advice ... of course, having lived in Florida for several years now, it's always best to be prepared.
Hmmmm, canned milk? I hadn't thought of that. What's the shelf life on that?
If you take 1 cup out for expansion you can freeze a plastic gallon of milk and it will keep your fridge freezer cold during an outage. We had six gallons in our upright freezer that saved the day when power was out from the hurricane last year.