50 Survival Tips Harvey Has Taught Me

As you may know, my town was one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Harvey. Incredibly, my house wasn’t damaged by rain or the floodwaters, and for that, we are beyond grateful. However, preparing for the storm, hunkering down through its 5 days of destructive rainfall and flooding, and now, working to help rebuild what we’ve lost as a community has been educational, to say the least. Here are some of the most important Harvey survival tips I’ve learned, in random order.

1. Anyone who isn’t a prepper is nuts. I’ll just start off with that blanket statement. I felt so prepared for this hurricane that I almost felt guilty as everyone else was fighting over cases of water bottles at Costco. In fact, the day before the storm hit, I ran to the grocery store anyway, just to keep in the spirit of things but nothing I bought was necessary at all. Three gallons of Blue Bell ice cream? Definitely not necessary. Thirty days worth of food in a back pantry somewhere, is.
2. Don’t go through any medical procedure the day before a hurricane hits. My son had an ingrown toenail taken care of on the Friday morning Harvey arrived and when the toe looked like it could be infected (it wasn’t), there was no medical service available short of a trip to the ER.
3. Get flood insurance, even if you live in an area that doesn’t traditionally flood. Homeowners insurance does not cover damage caused by water coming in to your house. Only 15% of people in the Houston area had flood insurance. I have been thanking God every day that I ponied up the $450 last year for coverage. This might be the biggest Harvey survival tip of all.
4. Along with that, review your insurance limits to make sure they offer the amount of coverage you’ll need in case of wind damage, water damage, fire, etc. Make sure your understanding of what is and isn’t covered is crystal clear.
5. Charge all electronics, including solar battery chargers, in the days leading up to something like this. Afterwards, just keep them fully charged, since power outages happen regularly.
6. Social media is an absolute necessity in times like this. Facebook groups have popped up, connecting neighbor with neighbor and allowing us to loan/borrow things like box fans, extension cords, chain saws, and the like. People are coming out of the woodwork to help out, and it’s because of Facebook.
7. Nextdoor.com is another life saver. I was very uncomfortable with this website when I first learned about it a couple of years ago. However, with Harvey, it’s been one of the best resources around for information that impacts us most directly. The local news channel isn’t going to let me know about a downed tree in front of the First Methodist Church, but people on Nextdoor.com will!
8. Heavy duty galoshes (rain boots) can be worth their weight in gold. Trudging through inches and feet of floodwater can be dangerous without boots. My kids both have boots that almost reach their knees, and these were perfect for our needs.
9. Always have a few filled gas cans around.
10. If you do make a run to the grocery store in the days leading up to a big storm or something similar, go ahead and throw in some goodies you don’t normally buy. I didn’t need 3 gallons of Blue Bell, but it was kind of nice to have a treat while we were sitting around listening to hours of rainfall.
11. Get a few Luci lights. I fell in love with this product during the time we were without power. It’s an inflatable solar lantern that is ultra lightweight. The Luci collapses into a little disk that is so easy to tuck into an emergency bag, a drawer, or the glove compartment. When our power was out, this lantern was just perfect for providing enough light for a work area or for reading.
12. Your relatives and friends are going to worry about you, so just accept that and get used to repeating the same information again and again. How wonderful to have people who care about your safety!
13. Call your insurance company or agent ASAP. They will respond to claims in the order received, so get in there early.
14. If you experience damage that FEMA may help cover, register with them ASAP also. You’ll receive a registration number. Save that on your cell phone and email it to yourself so it will always be handy.
15. If you do lose everything, or at least a LOT of what you own, go ahead and cry and ignore people who say things like, “It’s just things. You’re lucky to be alive.” I’m hearing that on our local forum and it’s not helpful at all. It’s okay to grieve over ruined things. They were a part of your life. They represented what was once normal and now that is gone, at least for now. Cry all you want to and need to without making any excuses. For those of you who want to give real support and comfort to someone who has lost everything, read this.
16. If you think you may end up without power, go on that assumption and prepare. Run small loads of laundry once a day, run the dishwasher, even when it’s only half full. If the power goes out, you’ll be starting out with clean clothes and dishes.
17. Pressure canning can be one way to preserve meat that is in the freezer in a power outage. Again, if you think your power may go out, start canning that meat right away. If you have a gas range, you can do the canning without electricity.
18. You’ll need matches to light the burners on your gas range when the power goes out. Make sure you have plenty of matches. Buy 3 or 4 big boxes. They’re cheap.
19. Prior to a big emergency like Harvey, people will go nuts buying cases of bottled water. Try to keep 3 or 4 cases on hand all the time to avoid the rush, and then have a dozen or more bottles in the freezer. These will help keep the frozen food cold if the power goes out and can be used in an ice chest as well.
20. Watch local news but don’t go overboard. After a while it gets repetitive anyway and it can definitely be discouraging.
21. Churches will be at the forefront of rescue, recovery, and rebuilding. If you want to help out, call a church. Every church in my town was involved with Harvey recovery in one way or another.
22. Prepare your home for guests. In the case of hundreds or thousands of people being displaced, a very simple way to help is to open up your home, even if just for a few hours. Provide a peaceful, safe haven for families who have lost everything. I think hospitality is greatly overlooked when it comes to disaster recovery.
23. Not all phone weather apps are the same. I am liking Weather Underground very, very much but Weather Bug was a disappointment. For people who can’t get enough weather information, you’ll want to download Storm, which I review here.
24. Be prepared for emotional ups and downs. On Day 4, I was angry and not very nice to be around. On Day 5, I was weepy, especially when I heard about a brave police officer who lost his life trying to help flooded families. I cried when I realized my hair salon was flooded, not because I would have to put up with gray roots for another couple of weeks but because it represented the very carefree life I had lived before and how much has been lost.
25. Get outside when you can do so safely.
26. Bicycles can get places where vehicles cannot. On a bike you’ll be able to check out storm damage, visit neighbors, run errands, and get fresh air and exercise at the same time.
27. Be aware of downed electrical wires. One young man lost his life while walking through water that hid a power line.
28. Think about all the volunteers who are going to be thirsty and hungry. Pack brown bag lunches for them and have the  kids help out.
29. One thing we all take for granted is clean laundry. People with flooded homes will not be able to do laundry and wearing damp, dirty clothes for hours and maybe days at a time is uncomfortable and disheartening. Offer to do laundry for them as an easy way to volunteer.
30. Buy a few N95 respirators when you begin cleaning out flooded homes. During the Katrina clean-up, many people contracted debilitating illnesses due to inhaling mold and mildew spores.
31. Consider how you’ll care for your pets both during and after a disaster. Stock up on pet food and kitty litter, if you have cats. If your home is damaged, how will you keep your pets from running away? Make sure you have kennels for them and they are wearing collars with ID tags and have been microchipped.
32. If you see a stray pet, keep it safe until you can find its owner. Animal shelters are quickly overwhelmed and at capacity. Use Facebook groups for your town and community and Nextdoor.com to reunite pets and owners.
33. Children may be the most traumatized group of all. Don’t overburden them with your every random thought about doom and gloom! Give them constructive things to do, so they feel they are contributing something important to the family’s survival.
34. If you are going to help with flood recovery, be sure to wear protective gear, including the respirator mentioned above. Wear boots that go above your ankle a few inches to protect from snake bites and fire ants and heavy work gloves. When the mucking out and clean up begin, be sure to protect yourself and everyone else by wearing very sturdy shoes (nails, screws and other sharp pieces will be everywhere), heavy duty gloves, and long pants.
35. Don’t advertise on social media or elsewhere that your home has been flooded and you’re leaving. This just gives looters information that will help them locate your home, specifically.
36. Even if you can’t help with actual demo work inside flooded homes, you can loan tools, small generators, filled gas cans, work gloves, extension cords, and fans. Label them with your name and phone number but in the madness of storm recovery, you may not get them back. Bless and release.
37. Stock up on those black, heavy duty trash bags. They’ll come in handy for storm debris, ruined food, mildewed clothes, pieces of wet sheetrock, etc.
38. Fill your freezer with bags of ice. It will come in handy during while power is out and can be used to keep food and drinks cold for volunteers and rescue workers.
39. When floodwater is coming in, turn off your electricity at the main breaker and keep it off.
40. With road closures, you may not have clear passage to help out at shelters, help neighbors muck out their homes, and reach rescue workers, so be prepared to walk. A heavy duty wagon is super helpful at a time like this, as is a bike trailer, for carrying tools, food, and other supplies.
41. Take both video and photos of your home’s belongings. Some insurance companies prefer one over the other so have both.
42. As you replace ruined belongings, carpet, sheetrock, and the like, keep every single receipt. If you can, scan them and save them to the cloud or email the scanned images to yourself.
43. Don’t be surprised if you are overwhelmed with kind offers of help. Even though our home wasn’t flooded, I was contacted by people all over Texas and even out of state wanting to help me out. In times like these, people want to help, want to give, and want to be a part of the rescue. It’s an amazing side of humanity I’m seeing, not only in my town but in all areas affected by Harvey.
44. Take care of yourself. You’re going to need a mental break every now and then. On Day 4, I took an Epsom salt bath and had a glass of Moscato. It helped.
45. Use the Waze app to find multiple routes from Point A to Point B. It will account for road closures, which is immensely helpful.
46. If you don’t know your neighbors now, you soon will! Be the first one to reach out with offers of a hot cup of coffee, a couple of hours of babysitting for a stressed out mom, or heavy duty labor to help an elderly person clear out their yard.
47. Don’t wig out every time you hear a news report, especially on social media. If it doesn’t come directly from an official channel, then take a few deep breaths and wait until it’s verified. I got a text message from a friend telling me to start filling up my bathtubs with water because, “…they are going to be doing something to our water today.” Someone on Facebook said, “I just talked with a few people in the know and they said Conroe Dam is going to be doubling their water release.” In both cases the information was wrong and a lot of people were needlessly scared.
48. It will take a while for life to return to a new normal. My hair stylist will find another salon in which to touch up my gray roots. My doctor will relocate to another office somewhere in town. We’ll be patient as our favorite restaurants work to re-open. Much of survival is mental and it’s important to accept and adapt to changes.
49. Be prepared to homeschool for a while. Years ago I worked at a school that was hit incredibly hard in a late-summer storm. It’s metal roof was ripped off and classrooms were filled with water. In that case, students had to be shuffled to other schools, and it wasn’t until January that this school was able to re-open. Depending on your circumstances, you may need to become a homeschooler, even if just for a week or two. I’ve written a lot about how to get started homeschooling and you can read all of that here.
50. If you have skills in administration and logistics, put them to work! One neighborhood in my town has set up their own volunteer check-in desk at the entrance to their subdivision! As volunteers arrive, they are directed to specific homes in need of help. To do this, you’ll need neighborhood maps, roving volunteers with walkie-talkies to assess damage and report to the control center, and, of course, food and water is appreciated. This is a brilliant example of micro-emergency response.
51. Prepare yourself mentally by thinking through “what if?” scenarios. What is you wake up to water flooding the inside of your house? What if you have to evacuate by boat? What if the roof is ripped off by winds during the night? Run these scenarios through your mind and now, when time is on your side, rehearse what you’ll do, what you need to have within arm’s reach, etc.
52. Finally, become a good listener to those who are in shock. When a home becomes unlivable, it shakes a family to the core.  A home isn’t just a cement foundation, wood framing, and sheetrock. It’s the ultimate safe space. It’s what you look forward to at the end of the day. It’s where “your people” are. Perhaps what Harvey’s victims will need the most, once the muck and the mud are cleared out and the reality of being homeless for a while sets in, is just a listening ear, and that’s something all of us can provide.

Finally, here are a few ways that my family and I prepared in the hours leading up to Harvey’s arrival:

1. Charged all electronics and battery packs. We’ve always used the Jackery to charge our phones when they are dead and we don’t have access to an outlet.
2. We bought extra bags of ice in case we have to pack freezer food in the cooler.
3. Bought several additional cases of water. Hurricanes will bring floods and floods very often overwhelm municipal water systems. In that case, we’ll get a boil order, and we can boil water on our gas range or using our Silverfire rocket stove, but bottled water just makes it easier to have drinking water on hand.
4. I froze one case of the bottled water. Those will help keep food in the freezer colder, longer, and we can use them to pack our 3 coolers, if necessary. BTW, for Father’s Day I broke down and bought my husband a small YETI cooler. It was a splurge but now I’m glad. We don’t have any medications that require refrigeration, but if we did, a YETI of any size would help keep them cold for several days.
5. We pulled out all out our emergency supplies and sorted through them to see if there was anything else we might need.
6. Rounded up all light sources and put at least 2 in each room. We have a couple of LUCI lights, and I adore them. They are these little inflatable things that collapse when not in use, but each one runs on a tiny solar battery and has multiple functions.
7. Before the storm arrived, we cleared everything off the back patio and put it in the garage and tied down the 2 kayaks. These are pretty big, too big for the garage, so they were tied down to our patio.

Every emergency, big or small, presents us with lessons to learn as we prepare, endure the event itself, and then recover.