Hurricane Season

Hurricane Season
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This guest post is courtesy of Joe Perko, Director of Field Services at Rapid Refile is a recognized leader in document restoration and recovery, vacuum-freeze drying, mold remediation and flood restoration services for businesses and individuals.

Avoid Document Restoration Needs: How to Prepare

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 and peaks between the months of August and September. About 10 named storms occur each season, with an average of two or three becoming major hurricanes.

 

How to Prepare for Hurricane Season

In addition to affecting coastlines, hurricanes and tropical storms can affect communities that are hundreds of miles inland. Hurricanes can bring winds exceeding 155 miles per hour, as well as microbursts (straight-line winds that shoot air downward), tornadoes, storm surges, floods and extensive damage. Flying debris and floods are often the most deadly, expensive and destructive results of hurricanes, especially when the storms move slowly through an area. Since it’s difficult to predict what the next hurricane season has in store, being prepared can help you stay safe and recover faster.

Before the hurricane season begins:

Make an emergency plan for your family and/or business. In this plan, include the location of a safe meeting place, important phone numbers, the location of community hurricane shelters and a map of emergency evacuation routes. Additionally, make a plan to recover and get back on your feet after the storm passes.

Prepare an emergency kit. This kit should include a radio, drinking water, food, clothes, blankets, medications, flashlight, pet supplies (if appropriate) and copies of important paperwork.

Know your area. Identify the areas of your community that are most likely to flood to determine the risk to your property.

Review your insurance policy. Sometimes insurance policies don’t cover water damage to homes and buildings. Review your insurance policy with your agent, even if you rent, to make sure you have enough coverage against wind and water damage.

Purchase materials to protect your home. If you don’t have hurricane or storm shutters for your windows, you’ll need to cover them with 5/8-inch marine plywood.

Manicure your landscape. Keep trees and shrubs around your home trimmed so they resist the wind better.

Scan important documents. These documents can include contracts, deeds to buildings, titles for vehicles, photographs, historical pieces, books, medical records and so on. A document restoration service can give you advice about saving important documents.

Restoring Wet Documents

Restoring wet documents after a hurricane or storm can be difficult to do on your own, especially if the weather is humid and there is a loss of power. One of the best ways to recover your wet documents is with the help of a document restoration service that uses vacuum-freeze drying techniques. This method includes the use of a chamber that blast-freezes wet documents and vaporizes the ice using precise pressure and temperature controls to prevent further damage. Vacuum-freeze drying is the ideal, highest-quality method to salvage wet books, photos, specialty or fragile papers and large volumes of books and paper.

Who gave you the right to take my Guns from me

 

Who gave you the right?
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I love Steve Lee and the Lees, my son grew up (and still grows up) dancing to “I like guns”, but while the Lees have some whimsical songs that are fun to listen to, they also have some very powerful ideals behind their music.

Steve Lee gives a monologue before the music video to “Who gave you the right to take my Guns from me”

His words give valuable insight into the core reason behind the assault on our Gun rights.

If we allow ourselves to have this crucial civil liberty stolen from us then we will have no ability to protect our other rights.

There is already a concerted effort to erode our other fundamental rights in t he name of state security.

It should be so self evident that we have a right to defend ourselves, our families, our country, and our way of life that gun control should never even be thought off – but as the video shows this is not the case because most people choose to love by feelings.

For me I ask – Who gave you the right to try to take my rights?  I know I did not agree to this.

Organizing your Community for Disaster

Organizing your Community for Disaster
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It’s a well-known idea in the prepper community that you cannot survive alone. Some folks may want to ignore this and try to get everything they could ever need, but prepping is not just about stuff. No single person can ever be totally self-sufficient – There will always be something you do not have the resources, skill or time to make. Heck even if you could, who will guard you when you sleep, shower, or well…

I think nothing is better preparedness than organizing your community for disaster.  It is not easy, and you can’t do it fast, but it is worth every bit of time you spend to do it.

I like to say (which gets me strange or knowing looks depending on who I say it to) – “You cannot shoot everybody”. To me a good plan takes into consideration your neighbors, to get others near you to prep and plan for their own disaster needs. It turns neighbors into allies rather than enemies. It gives you someone to work with and makes a community.

The problem (as I see it) is that while all sorts of government and non-government agencies preach disaster preparedness a similar amount (sometimes under the same czar) or agencies post bulletins telling people to look out for people that prep. If you just tell everyone you’re a prepper you will most likely get invited to less neighborhood cookouts than more.

My attempt to try to organize my community is by going slowly and trying to organize a government sponsored group. That way if it takes off I can slowly build trust in the community, gauge capabilities, and eventually approach the likeminded for a more comprehensive plan.

DHS has a program through Citizen Corps called Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT). A CERT team is a group of volunteers that receive free training in emergency response. They take classes on basic disaster response, light search and rescue, first aid, firefighting, and other needed response activities. The idea is that in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, CERT members grab their gear, meet up, and rapidly assess the needs of the immediate community. They can then report back to the local emergency management agency a list of needs and hazards thereby making response faster and more efficient.

Because it is government sponsored and relatively well known it is a lot less “threatening” to non-preppers. I imagine going door to door talking about bobs, SHTF, WROL, and storing ammo would not be well received in most areas. Going door to door talking about an enhanced neighborhood watch sponsored by FEMA to make sure nobody is left to fend for themselves after a flood or tornado is much less “non pc”.

So what I did was approach the County Emergency Management Director and ask him for support. He told me he thought it was a great idea, but that he has tried it before and did not get a good turnout for the classes.

I then made a flier with the information, what CERT was, that it was free, that it did not take a lot of time, and the benefits. I printed out 100 flyers and over a weekend my wife drove me around to drop them off. I was surprised at the friendliness of my neighbors, I received a very positive response in all but two homes – one was too busy, and the other very haughtily told me she did not think anything could happen, that the government would help if it did, and she did not want to waste her time (I told the wife to remember her – she gets no help if something does happen).

So I passed the fliers out – Part one – hopefully I will get a response. If not, I will continue working in the yard and being a role model for “urban homesteading” and “sustainable living”, if a disaster ever strikes maybe enough will remember my attempt to organize which may give me some credibility toward a response after the fact. Obviously that is not as good as having a local group pre-disaster, but its better than nothing.

I was careful not to mention prepping in my CERT conversations; I am less worried about OPSEC than someone like Mr. Rawles from survivalblog. That is because of my firearm classes who I am and what I am doing is on the internet, but I feel like most who read my articles would be the type to join a CERT team, so I don’t worry about them. However, I did not want to talk about my preps to those that live down the street, as I would not want them to get the idea to take what is mine (Unlike Dilbert, I have no protein bars), if they try, I cannot shoot everybody – They may get me in a rush, but I can turn a head or 30 into canoes…

How to Can Meatloaf for a Easy Meal

 

52 Unique Techniques for Stocking Food for Prepper
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I saw this idea for canning meatloaf on YouTube (user BexarPrepper), and wanted to try it out. Her recipe looked really good, but I realize most everyone has a meatloaf recipe so I would not bore you with mine (especially since it has not measurements and changes based upon my feelings and the ingredients in my spice drawer and refrigerator door.

 I will say that most meatloaf recipes contain bread crumbs or crackers as a binder and you cannot safely pressure can with them (per the FDA and Dept. of Ag), so leave them out or do so at your own risk.

Once you have your meatloaf recipe made, and your jars and lids sterilized just pack the raw meatloaf into wide mouth jars. If you do not use wide mouth jars you will be making ground beef, as you will never get it out of the can whole.

I used wide moth jars, but they still had a shoulder, and I have to cut around the shoulder to get my batch out – next time I am using smaller jars with straight sides.

This is a raw pack method

Do not cook before canning, or ad liquid. You also want extra headspace for the grease. Use 1” of headspace.

  • Process Pints with a Pressure Canner for 75 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure
  • Process Quarts with a Pressure Canner for 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure

After processing, remove from boiling water and place the jars on a towel, separated

by 1” to cool naturally as quickly as possible.

I know the cooled jar will look unappetizing, especially as the grease congeals on the outside, but even my picky bride said she liked it once it was reheated and removed from the jar.

Besides on days we both work late, it’s simple to reheat the can and mix up some mashed potato pearls to make a decent “homemade” meal.

How to Use Mason Jars with a Blender

How to Use Mason Jars with a Blender

 

How to Use Mason Jars with a Blender
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This Mason Jar Blender Tip is a simple trick that can make your kitchen life easier. It seems like many/most blender manufacturers designed the threads of their blender jars to match the threads of canning jars.

This means that in many cases (especially with older blenders) you can make a Mason Jar Blender.

Simply can screw the blade into your mason jar and blend your items in the jar. This makes it easy to measure things since many mason jars have cup markings molded into the glass.

If is also great to blend small amounts of things without having to clean the large blender jar.

Personally, I use it to make rubs and spice mixes.  Just take your dehydrated vegetables/spices/herbs and blend together to make all sorts of seasoned salt mixes.

It is also a easy way to make single serve smoothies if your into that sort of thing.  I use this all the time to make butter and creams.  It works great.  It also is much easier to clean than a full size blender.

This is one of my favorite tips so far.  I how this mason jar blender tip is as useful to you as it is to me.