New Jersey’s coastal location is one of the reasons it’s the most densely populated places to live in the entire U.S. Unfortunately, while that prime oceanfront location is great for fun in the sun, it also makes us very prone to the effects of hurricanes that like to travel up from warmer waters, hugging the coastline and slamming residents across the state with heavy rains, winds and plenty of unpredictable weather.
Hurricane season begins in the early summer on the East Coast, and that means now is the time to start planning. Every year, thousands of people – sometimes hundreds of thousands – go without power for a day or more, often during some of the hottest days of summer. That means plenty of suffering without air conditioning, not to mention thousands of dollars of food wasted when refrigerators aren’t running.
How to Prepare
If you haven’t started preparing for hurricane season, here are some tips from the federal government to get you started:
- Trim trees and shrubs around your home, paying special attention to dead and overhanging branches.
- Keep patio furniture, grills, free-standing swings, trash cans and other outdoor equipment secured to the ground or move them into a shed of garage before a storm arrives.
- Clear out your downspouts at least once in the summer and several times in the fall to enable water to drain away from your foundation.
- Consider installing a generator to keep the power up and running in your home – this tip is especially important if you or a loved one has a medical condition like heart disease or asthma and for New Jersey residents who are older or very young.
- If you have a generator, schedule a tuneup and servicing now and make sure you have the parts and accessories on hand to keep it running once a storm hits.
- Put together an emergency kit with some basic supplies; you can download a list of recommended items at the FEMA website and read more about emergency kits at the FEMA build-a-kit webapge.
- When a storm is predicted, make sure you have gas in your car and be sure you know any local escape routes, especially if you live near the shore or another water source.
Just because we’re better at predicting weather now than we were 50 years ago, that doesn’t mean hurricane season shouldn’t be taken seriously; what it does mean is that we should take advantages of those advances in technology to carefully plan and take steps to keep our property and our loved ones safe.
If you’d like to learn more about generators and the role they can play in preparing for a hurricane, or if you have a generator that needs servicing, give us a call today at (732) 410-7695 or Contact Us.