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Before a state of emergency, it’s crucial to create a disaster preparedness plan for your healthcare needs. It may be impossible to predict outcomes during a natural disaster or outbreak, but the following tips can prevent many life-threatening situations before they occur.
Health Preparedness tips for natural disasters and outbreaks
Preparing Before A Disaster Or Outbreak (Preparedness Tips)
Before a state of emergency, it’s crucial to create a disaster preparedness plan for your healthcare needs. It may be impossible to predict outcomes during a natural disaster or outbreak, but the following tips can prevent many life-threatening situations before they occur.
- Pack all essential medications in a waterproof bag. A freezer safe, re-sealable bag is great in a pinch.
- If possible, fill prescriptions ahead of time. In a state of emergency, prescriptions can be filled up to 30 days without prior doctor approval.
- Make a prescription medicine plan. Use Rx on the Run to print a personalized wallet card that. includes your prescriptions with the latest dosage and necessary instructions for proper use
- Purchase non-perishable food, water, and nutrient-rich items. Apples, bananas and oranges are a great snack that don’t require refrigeration and will last up to a week.
- Fully charge your electronic devices and pack spare batteries, chargers, and other essential items. To conserve battery, limit the use of unnecessary apps and switch your phone to low-power mode when fully charged.
- Be aware of your closest healthcare resources, including pharmacies, hospitals, and urgent care clinics. Use Google maps to drop a pin on nearby healthcare locations.
- Have a contingency plan for managing chronic conditions. For patients with:
- DIABETES: Ensure you have insulin and refrain from eating carbohydrates and other sugars.
- KIDNEY DISEASE: Make sure you have access to dialysis treatment.
- CARDIOVASCULAR/PULMONARY DISEASES: Keep a supply of oxygen with you at all times.
- DISABILITY: Develop contingency transportation plans or identify a trusted caretaker if necessary.
- ELDERLY: Post emergency numbers near every house and cellular phone.
- Make sure to have an evacuation plan in case you need to leave your home. To find a shelter near you, text FEMA the word “shelter” along with your zip code to 4-3-3-6-2.
- Use Rx Open (rxopen.org) to find open pharmacies near you.
Staying Safe And Healthy During A Disaster Or Outbreak (Tips)
During an emergency, unforeseen circumstances and events can put your health at risk. While it may be impossible to prevent all health complications, it’s critical to prioritize your health and minimize adverse effects. Remember that natural disasters and outbreaks can potentially disrupt operations for pharmacies, providers, and hospitals, so it’s crucial to prepare in advance to take care of your health.
- Take necessary medications as prescribed. To help maintain regularly scheduled use of medicines, organize your prescriptions for the week and schedule a reminder on your phone to take them as prescribed.
- Make sure your medications remain stable. It’s important to make sure your medicines do not come into contact with water or become exposed to extreme temperatures. Some medicines must remain within a certain temperature range.
- Use Rx Open to locate nearest open pharmacy if you run out of medicines or need a refill. If you have a chronic disease, disability, or are a senior and need emergency assistance, refer to the emergency resources below:
- Healthcare Ready: 1-866-247-2694
- FEMA: 1-800-621-3362
- American Diabetes Association: 1-800-342-2283
- American Heart Association: 1-800-242-8721
- American Association of People with Disabilities: 1-800-840-8844
- American Stoke Association: 1-888-478-7653
- American Red Cross: 1-800-733-2767
- Drink plenty of bottled water and avoid skipping meals. Eat nutrient-rich, non-refrigerated foods such as fruits and vegetables.
- Beware of floodwater contaminants:
- Do not drink floodwater; drink bottled water instead. If you don’t have bottled water, boil (for at least 1 minute) or disinfect water to make it safe.
- Do not cook, clean or brush teeth with floodwater.
- Cover open wounds and limit exposure to floodwater at all times.
- Do not eat foods that have expired, perished or come in contact with flood water. Perishable foods in the refrigerator will be unsafe to eat after 4 hours without power. Use dry or block ice to keep your refrigerator cold for longer or use an extra cooler.
- Recognize symptoms of food or waterborne illness. If you experience vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, contact a healthcare provider immediately.
Healthcare Ready has prepared PDFs for easy downloading with everything you need to know about several different health emergencies and natural disasters. Each sheet is equipped with local healthcare facility names and phone numbers, helpful hotline numbers and other information specific to each emergency. The emergency tip sheets available include
- Pandemics and disease outbreaks
- Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
- Extreme Heat
- Tornadoes
- Wildfires
- Earthquakes
- Winter storms
For more information on how your rare or chronic illness can be impacted by a disaster visit www.healthcareready.org, email us at alerts@healthcareready.org, and contact us at 1-866-247-2694
Health Preparedness tips for natural disasters and outbreaks
Preparing Before A Disaster Or Outbreak (Preparedness Tips)
Before a state of emergency, it’s crucial to create a disaster preparedness plan for your healthcare needs. It may be impossible to predict outcomes during a natural disaster or outbreak, but the following tips can prevent many life-threatening situations before they occur.
- Pack all essential medications in a waterproof bag. A freezer safe, re-sealable bag is great in a pinch.
- If possible, fill prescriptions ahead of time. In a state of emergency, prescriptions can be filled up to 30 days without prior doctor approval.
- Make a prescription medicine plan. Use Rx on the Run to print a personalized wallet card that. includes your prescriptions with the latest dosage and necessary instructions for proper use
- Purchase non-perishable food, water, and nutrient-rich items. Apples, bananas and oranges are a great snack that don’t require refrigeration and will last up to a week.
- Fully charge your electronic devices and pack spare batteries, chargers, and other essential items. To conserve battery, limit the use of unnecessary apps and switch your phone to low-power mode when fully charged.
- Be aware of your closest healthcare resources, including pharmacies, hospitals, and urgent care clinics. Use Google maps to drop a pin on nearby healthcare locations.
- Have a contingency plan for managing chronic conditions. For patients with:
- DIABETES: Ensure you have insulin and refrain from eating carbohydrates and other sugars.
- KIDNEY DISEASE: Make sure you have access to dialysis treatment.
- CARDIOVASCULAR/PULMONARY DISEASES: Keep a supply of oxygen with you at all times.
- DISABILITY: Develop contingency transportation plans or identify a trusted caretaker if necessary.
- ELDERLY: Post emergency numbers near every house and cellular phone.
- Make sure to have an evacuation plan in case you need to leave your home. To find a shelter near you, text FEMA the word “shelter” along with your zip code to 4-3-3-6-2.
- Use Rx Open (rxopen.org) to find open pharmacies near you.
During an emergency, unforeseen circumstances and events can put your health at risk. While it may be impossible to prevent all health complications, it’s critical to prioritize your health and minimize adverse effects. Remember that natural disasters and outbreaks can potentially disrupt operations for pharmacies, providers, and hospitals, so it’s crucial to prepare in advance to take care of your health.
- Take necessary medications as prescribed. To help maintain regularly scheduled use of medicines, organize your prescriptions for the week and schedule a reminder on your phone to take them as prescribed.
- Make sure your medications remain stable. It’s important to make sure your medicines do not come into contact with water or become exposed to extreme temperatures. Some medicines must remain within a certain temperature range.
- Use Rx Open to locate nearest open pharmacy if you run out of medicines or need a refill. If you have a chronic disease, disability, or are a senior and need emergency assistance, refer to the emergency resources below:
- Healthcare Ready: 1-866-247-2694
- FEMA: 1-800-621-3362
- American Diabetes Association: 1-800-342-2283
- American Heart Association: 1-800-242-8721
- American Association of People with Disabilities: 1-800-840-8844
- American Stoke Association: 1-888-478-7653
- American Red Cross: 1-800-733-2767
- Drink plenty of bottled water and avoid skipping meals. Eat nutrient-rich, non-refrigerated foods such as fruits and vegetables.
- Beware of floodwater contaminants:
- Do not drink floodwater; drink bottled water instead. If you don’t have bottled water, boil (for at least 1 minute) or disinfect water to make it safe.
- Do not cook, clean or brush teeth with floodwater.
- Cover open wounds and limit exposure to floodwater at all times.
- Do not eat foods that have expired, perished or come in contact with flood water. Perishable foods in the refrigerator will be unsafe to eat after 4 hours without power. Use dry or block ice to keep your refrigerator cold for longer or use an extra cooler.
- Recognize symptoms of food or waterborne illness. If you experience vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain, contact a healthcare provider immediately.
Healthcare Ready has prepared PDFs for easy downloading with everything you need to know about several different health emergencies and natural disasters. Each sheet is equipped with local healthcare facility names and phone numbers, helpful hotline numbers and other information specific to each emergency. The emergency tip sheets available include
- Pandemics and disease outbreaks
- Hurricanes and Tropical Storms
- Extreme Heat
- Tornadoes
- Wildfires
- Earthquakes
- Winter storms
Healthcare Ready is here to help you stay prepared for a natural disaster, infectious disease outbreak or man-made event. Our online resources provide easy tips for what to do next when a disaster strikes and help make life-after as normal as possible. For more information on how your rare or chronic illness can be impacted by a disaster visit www.healthcareready.org, email us at alerts@healthcareready.org, and contact us at 1-866-247-2694
Disability intersects every demographic group—there are people with disabilities of all ages, races, genders or national origin. And, disabilities can impact a person in a variety of ways—both visible and invisible. For people with disabilities and their families, it is important to consider individual circumstances and needs to effectively prepare for emergencies and disasters.
Frequently asked questions
Related to PowerOutage.us:
How do you record outages?
We work with distribution utilities to set up data integrations to record how many electric customers are without power. So, if an outage directly causes customers to lose power, we do our best to record it no matter the root cause.
Why are some areas on the map black?
There are a few causes to this:
We have not added an electric utility that covers that area yet
The electric utility that covers that area does not report outages at that level of detail
Why is "Customers Tracked" from some areas inaccurate?
Some electric utilities do not report the total number of customers that they serve in an area. In these cases, we use the maximum historical outage for that area as the "Customers Tracked" number.
Do you collect/sell address or personally identifiable information?
We do not collect, or sell, address or customer data.
Most utilities do not provide it, and we don't collect it from the few that do.
This is to protect the privacy of the utility customers, and prevent us from having to process, store, and protect PII data.
Why are there inaccuracies during sudden major outage events?
When there is a sudden massive loss of power across a significant area, usually caused by transmission grid outages, meters and other utility monitoring points can have difficulties communicating their status, so utilities' automatic reporting systems become inaccurate.
The utility knows that they have a transmission outage, but they don’t know the status of a specific meter. This is not an issue because the fault is not at the meter level, and they are working on fixing the actual faults, but it does mean customer-level reporting is hindered.
Since we solely rely on utilities' meter-level reporting for our customer outage data, during these major sudden events, there can be inaccuracies in total customer outage counts. We do our best to post updates and information when this is the case.
How can I help?
If you know of an electric utility with an outage website we don't track, please let us know so we can work on adding it.
If you are a customer of an electric utility that does not have a public-facing outage website or outage management system (OMS), then please ask them to add one.
Please let us know if you notice any discrepancies between this site and the various utility outage websites.
Related to Power Outages in general:
What are Distribution or Transmission Outages?
Distribution outages are local issues specific to the utility that provides power dirrectly to customer meters. They include events such as power line, transformer, and substation failures, rolling outage events, and public safety power shutoff events.
Transmission outages are power grid issues that affect distribution utilities. They include events such as transmission line failures, power plant failures, and grid operator directed power curtailments.
What are Power Curtailments, or Load Shedding?
When the amount of power being generated cannot meet current energy demand, power grid operators will call for Load Shedding or Power Curtailments. They direct the distribution utilities on their grid to lower the load on the grid; this is done mostly by increasing the cost of power, forcing power outages, or implementing rolling outages.
What are Rolling Outages?
When a utility must disconnect electric customers to lower overall grid loads, they will usually do this by instituting Rolling Outages, they will shut off specific circuits for a set amount of time, then turn them back on while shutting down the next set of electric circuits. With the goal to make it so each customer is only out for a short time, instead of a grid failure causing everyone to be out for a long time.
Keep in mind during these events customers can still lose power due to normal causes.
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Ready Georgia is a statewide campaign supported by the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (GEMA/HS) aimed at motivating Georgians to take action to prepare for a disaster.