Prepare for the Worst: Essential Tips for Natural Disaster Readiness

Host: 00:02:03

It's around the house. When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered. This is around the house.

Co-host: 00:02:15

Welcome to the Round the house show, the next generation of home improvement. Thanks for joining me today. Brought to you.

Bye, my friends over at Monument Grills, if you're looking for a great barbecue cause yours is worn out or you just, quite frankly, need to do the upgrade, check out monument grills at montymcgrills.com. dot they got the best grills for under $900 today. I wanted to talk about a few things.

First off, we've got this big strike at the port districts all along the east coast and through the south. So all the way through Texas, basically.

And we've got a serious problem there if you're getting ready to build or tackle a home improvement project, because we have a lot of materials that come in from over in Europe, and that's really the main place where those materials come through.

So if you're looking at stone, granite, if you're looking for building materials coming out of, there could be faucets, it could be toilets, it could be a lot of those beautiful brands that we get out of Europe. We're running through the stock here in the United States, but that won't last that long. So we'll see what happens.

But we can really start to see this effect in stuff that's in the stores now, the good news is, and I, and I say this, good news, bad news. The good news is we do have a little bit of stuff that's made in the US, and then the rest of that stuff's coming out of China.

So we're going to have basically the stuff from China and the stuff here made in the United States or coming up from the south, out of Mexico or out of Canada. Now, the thing is, support our made in USA people right now. I really love it.

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And there's a lot of people we're going to be highlighting here in the future of Made in USA stuff. I'll do the Amazon stuff where I'm showing off the knockoff stuff.

But really, I really want to support made in USA people because we don't have any import problems when you're buying it from the states and it's being made right here. So that's the cool thing right there. Let's keep an eye on that. If this strike goes on for weeks, it looks like it's not anywhere.

As of this morning, Wednesday looks like it's nothing close to getting started to be negotiated. When people want 70 plus percent pay raise, it's probably going to take a while to get there.

And for them to figure out, someone's going to have to blink. And it looks like we're in for a game of chicken for a while.

And the west coast ports are already so jammed up because of the politics over here as well. Where I live here in Portland area, we used to have a very active port, but we had a strike here years ago and some work slowdowns.

And finally the shipping company said, forget it, we're not stopping there. And it shut down. We're not getting containers in anymore here in Portland. And it used to be a huge thing.

So our roads are packed up with more containers and trucks because they have to go into Seattle, San Francisco laden places like that. So it's already a big mess here.

And you're not going to just ship those things through the canal and back up this side of the country and drop off here and expect to get unloaded quickly. So we're going to have some hiccups in the production line, I think, for building materials coming up. So be prepared for that.

I wanted to talk about a bigger issue that we've got right now, and that's what's going down in the south from the hurricane and the aftermath and the flooding in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and the stuff we have there. Basically they got the Katrina in the mountains, and that's a huge problem. And anything we can do to help these people, they need help.

The government is being really slow and getting stuff there, which is common, which is why I wanted to bring this up today of some of the things that we've already learned or been reminded of since watching this. And that is you need to be prepared for a natural disaster.

Maybe it's a wildfire, maybe it's a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, whatever it is, as we've seen here, it can take week or two for people to get help.

There are a lot of communities that still have not had stuff come in and have not had any help from anybody getting them back up to speed where they have the basics, water, food, even some kind of shelter. So do a little research, do some planning, put some stuff away. And so at least you have the basics.

If you have a natural disaster, where is your clean water supply? Do you have some? Do you have a filter and a massive water supply? But you have a filter that'll take muddy water and make it into something drinkable.

Do you have two or three weeks for the food at least? And I'd say three weeks. It's really easy to do, actually.

You can jump online, go on Amazon, go into your local store, buy something here, like Mountain House is my favorite brand. They're a local company here on the west coast. But you can go into Rei or any one of those places and buy the food there. It's delicious.

I'd have no problem having it for food now. But it's freeze dried. It's good for about 30 years. You can put the boxes away and it'll be safe.

If you just keep it in a cool, dry place, they'll last you 30 years and you're not going to be worried about swapping out canned goods and throwing food away and that kind of thing. So make sure you got water.

You got a way to heat water, whether that's a fire outside or you've got a gas stove, a camp stove, a barbecue, something to get that going, something that you've got fuel for. And in a natural disaster, you might not have running water, you might not have power, you might not have natural gas.

So you want to make sure that you've got all those things to back up just in case. And then one of my favorite ones is to make sure you got two or three, maybe four biggest gray heavy duty tarps.

Get those from your local tarp supply place, whether it's down at the home improvement store, whether or not you're just getting something cheap over there because you can't afford it, you know, at like harbor freight, you know, those made in China ones over there. And again, see if you can get prepared for this. And I know I just gave a speech on buying in the United States.

It's really hard to find made in USA Tarps, but find something that's going to work for you, you can put in the back of the shed or something like that because that can be shelter, that can be protecting a damaged house. If you had roof shingles blow off or a tree go into it and then make sure.

The other thing is you've got all your medications always filled up, including food for you and your pets. Make sure they're part of the family as well. And that's going to be a really big part of this.

So a little bit of prep on this right now, we're learning a lot of lessons of people that are like, wow, I haven't had water in here and four or five days, that's a problem. And if you've got a severe damage, I mean, there's only so much water in that water heater in the toilet tanks.

When you're really looking for water, that's going to get you there. So make sure that you've got all those things to sustain life and then start working on the rest of it, like a generator and fuel for it.

Do you want to go extra beyond that? That's awesome.

But just make sure that you've got some answers there and that you've got things protected around your house, all the people down there in flooding. We're going to cover this in this weekend's episode of around the house.

Our first hour, we're going to talk about what to do when you've got a flooded basement, a flooded house, what's the best way to clean it?

What's the best way to do it right now, if you're in this situation and you're trying to figure out what to do and you haven't even gotten a hold of your insurance company, what I would do today, before you listen to the show, if you're one of our very valued viewers and listeners down there, just run around your with your phone, take pictures and video of what you have now, try to capture the current condition.

Make sure so when you go file that insurance claim, if you have insurance, make sure that you've got some captured video and pictures of what's going on.

Take, it's so hard because you're in the middle of it and I know it's got to be super upsetting, but run around and take video of what you've got, the conditions they are right now.

So then when the insurance company does finally get out there, because it's going to take a long time for them to get out there, you're going to have some more data to give them, and the more you can give them, the better off you're going to be. So do that. Protect the property if you can, you know, get things covered up, see if you can keep it from getting further damage.

And then you're going to have to go through that process.

And we're going to keep continuing on this discussion as we go on in the coming weeks to make sure we cover everybody because it's a good reminder that this can happen to almost any of us.

Whether it's an atmospheric river here that hits on the west coast coming from the Pacific, or if it's a hurricane coming up over there, this could really happen to anybody. And we want to make sure that we've got it covered.

For you, the homeowner or the renters out there, for all you people that are in condos or apartments or houses or duplexes, whatever you're in, want to make sure that everybody's got things covered. And it's a good time to also check to see where your insurance is right now.

You know, if, if you have dodged this and you're in good shape, might be a good time to reach out to your agent and find out if you're covered for these kind of things. If there's a question in your head and you don't know what it is, call your agent and ask them.

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And take a listen back here. We had a great discussion with the guys from virtual home inventory where they give some tips on inventorying your house.

So in case you do have a natural disaster like this that you're much easier, you can able to recover that and be in a much better spot. And that's going to be huge. So best of luck to you guys out there.

And if you have any questions for your situation or what you should do, feel free to hit me up@aroundthehouseonline.com. dot. That's where you can send me a message and I'm there to help you. I want to see if I can do what I can to help you guys out.

Hey, if you're in Portland this week in Portland, Oregon, head over to chown hardware onto their website. I'm going to be at an event tomorrow night. This is going to be a lot of fun.

We are auctioning off some items for a local charity here, Rose haven, and over to chowne.com and take a look there. I will be over there. Come say hi. We are auctioning off this beautiful, beautiful bathtub that was painted by a local artist here, Donald.

And he painted this rose and bees and stuff across the front of this freestanding bathtub that we are auctioning off for charity. So make sure an RSVP over there@chowne.com. take a look at that Thursday night. So that'll be a lot of fun.

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Having a good time over there and look forward to seeing you if you're in the area, if you're traveling, if you're in the area here, come say hi. I'll be over there helping them out and get that thing auctioned off this tub.

If I had room, it'd be going to my house because it is that gorgeous, beautiful piece of art. And I'll share that up on social media today so you can take a look at it and see. But oh, my gosh. Things stunning. And it's going for a great cause.

Helping women and children out there that are experiencing homelessness and other issues like that, trying to make sure that they've got shelter and that they are in the right safe place for their family. So we got a great show coming up this weekend. We're also going to talk about showers and things like that. So we got a big show coming up on Saturday.

I'll give you the tease on that a little later on tomorrow, on Thursday or Friday morning, depending when that goes out. But as always, guys, make sure you check out our new YouTube channel that is at around the house. Eric G.

You can find it over there or just over to around the house online.com. all right, everybody, have a great rest of the week. Stay safe out there.

Help out your neighbor if you're down in the south, if you're anywhere near that area, there's a lot of people that need assistance. So lend a helping hand when you can stay safe this week. Thanks for tuning in to around the house.

Guest: 00:14:09

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