Hi Guys,
This is a good and timely thread for me, as we are getting close to our cyclone season.
I’ve lived in Darwin, Northern Australia for over forty years and every year we get the instruction on TV, do this, do that.
Do we ever do it? Well…….. sometimes I guess.
Human nature makes us either lazy or optimists taking the attitude It’ll miss us.
There’s a couple of good lists in the previous posts, and the authorities always have lists in the media etc of what to do, so here’s a couple points from my experience.
Check your insurance, don’t laugh, just make sure that it’s enough. What it cost you to build is not really relevant, it is what it will cost to rebuild when it’s all over.
Get your kit together at the beginning of the season. Don’t do your shopping for batteries, food etc along with 95% of the population, after a warning has been issued and most of the shelves are already empty.
Fill up containers of water, or at least fill the bath with fresh water. Uprooted trees etc can mean that the water gets turned off for days.
Canned food, plenty of it. Anything else that can be eaten without cooking, and kept without refrigeration.
Insecticide spray and cream, mossie repellant.
You need to make a decision beforehand about where you are going to stay in the event of a bad one. There are a lot of factors in this, how strong is your house, it’s location, what the emergency shelters are like and where they are. etc etc. If you are going to move then do it in time.
Personally I stay at home, I get ready and we just sweat it out. The last place I want to be is in a government shelter along with a few hundred strangers. I delivered supplies to one of these places once, they had continued sh**ting in the toilets for days after the water was cut off, living in filth and squalor, and yet there was a few dozen able bodied men that could have dug latrines on day one.
When things start to get a bit grim, retire to the smallest rooms in the house. They have small windows, and if the house starts breaking up the walls tend to jam together in bathrooms rather than fall flat.
If you are lucky (unlucky) enough to have the eye pass over you, recognise the eye for what it is, by all means if possible render assistance to neighbours, but be aware that the storm will be back, with a vengeance, no building up for a few hours this time. Remember when the wind does come back it will be from the opposite direction.
Cheers
Bill.