"You Are Here. Where Is Your Family?"

Have any of you seen this billboard (or one just like it) lately along I15 going northbound right around the American Fork/Lehi area? Where are you in your emergency plan? If you think about it, the idea of having an emergency meeting place set up must have some credence for the government to be putting these types of billboards out.

A suggestion - have a family night on where you'll meet if something goes wrong. Ask yourselves "If something went wrong, what is our plan?" Would mom stay at home with the kids until dad got there? Would you meet at Aunt June's house? What streets would you take? Suppose you end up at Aunt June's, but your wife and kids or your husband doesn't? Will you have a map handy that lists what streets they anticipated taking if it ever came to that? At what point do you go and try to find each other? After a day? Two days? You get the picture. This is definitely a discussion you need to have amongst your family members. You might try getting online to some place like www.mapquest.com or www.googlemaps.com and print off various routes you might take. It might not be as extravagant as it sounds, but when you're making out your routes, keep in mind there are different severities of disasters. It might be as simple as something like power lines being down in a bad storm, or maybe freeways will be totally inaccessible in the event of the earthquake. If that were the case, you'd need to find a route you could take that would still be in working function.

For your information, here's an excerpt from the Ad Council's website (www.adcouncil.org) with an interesting statistic:

"91% of Americans believe it’s important to be prepared for emergencies. However, only 55% of households report having taken any steps at all to prepare. In order to encourage more Americans to prepare themselves, their families and their communities, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has sponsored public service advertisements that educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to all kinds of emergencies. "

Be one of the 55%!