During this Severe Weather Awareness Week, families should establish and discuss their emergency plans. Washington County Emergency Management Coordinator Marissa Riesen says it’s important to have an emergency kit for your family ready to go. Those kits should include water, non-perishable food, phone chargers, and medications. She also says to include a copy of your medical records and veterinary records for pets, “If you have paper copies, yes you want to have your copies in your locked file, but you can also do paper copies and put them in a gallon zip-loc bag and then put them a folder, and put them in your kit. That helps protect them from, you know, if things get wet, keeps them from blowing away. Another thing that I’m a big fan of is thumbdrives. It’s a great place to store your stuff, you can password protect it. A lot of companies make them that have a little hole so you can put them on a keyring. I have all kinds of stuff on mine and it’s always with me when I’ve got my keys.”

Reisen says to have a conversation with your family about what you would do if you are at home and there’s a tornado, as well as how and where you’ll meet up if you’re at work, school, or activities and a storm were to hit. If you are apart when a storm hits and you need to contact each other, text messages are the best way to go. Phone services can see a high call volume following emergencies, and text messages will still go through because they require less bandwidth than calls.