Use your extra hour this weekend to check your emergency stockpile

What would you do with an extra hour? With daylight saving time ending this weekend, you have a chance to find out. And APHA has the perfect solution with what to do with your extra hour: Take some time to get more prepared.

In conjunction with its Get Ready campaign, APHA is reminding you to “Set Your Clocks, Check Your Stocks” this Sunday, Nov. 1. That means in addition to checking the batteries in your smoke alarm, it’s also time to make sure you and your household are ready for emergencies.

APHA has these tips on how you can use that bonus hour to become prepared:

* Check your stockpile and make sure that your emergency supplies, such as food, water and batteries, are still good. If you don’t have a stockpile, take some time to create one.

* Re-familiarize yourself and your family with your community’s emergency preparedness plan, including evacuation routes, emergency shelters and the location of food banks.

* Update your family communication plan, which will spell out how you will get in touch with one another during an emergency.

* Gather extra supplies for your pets, which need their own stockpile of food and water.

* Collect your medications together in one place, and make sure you have enough supplies in case you or your family have to stay home with the flu for a few days.

The Get Ready: Set Your Clocks, Check Your Stocks Web site has a wealth of free information that can help you with your emergency supplies, including easy-to-understand fact sheets on what to put in your stockpile (PDF), budget stockpiling (PDF), stockpiling for pets (PDF), a stockpiling checklist (PDF) and the supplies you need to have on hand for a cold or the flu (PDF).

Still not convinced? Read what the University of Minnesota had to say about Set Your Clocks, Check Your Stocks on its Promising Practices: Pandemic Preparedness Tools Web site and see what the buzz is about.