June 1st is the start of hurricane season. For people in hurricane-prone areas, that means the risk of heavy rainfall, high winds, storm surges, flooding, tornados, and rip currents, which can all happen with little warning. Are you ready to leave your house at a moment’s notice? We’ve got tools to help you prepare.
The FTC’s site, Dealing with Weather Emergencies, has practical tips to help you get ready for, deal with, and recover from a weather emergency — including hurricanes and other natural disasters. Like all our materials, the site is mobile-friendly, so you’ll have ready access to information when and where you need it.
The page has four sections:
- Preparing for a Weather Emergency
- Staying Alert to Disaster-related Scams
- Getting Back on Your Feet Financially
- Resources
Even people not in a hurricane’s path can be affected, though. Are you one of many who generously contributes to disaster relief efforts after a hurricane? Before you give, make sure your charitable donations really count. Recovery efforts are a perfect opportunity for scammers to exploit people’s generosity, so stay on the lookout for charity scams.
Want to do your part in keeping your community well-informed and safe? Share this customizable one-page handout, Picking Up the Pieces after a Disaster, which compiles key tips from the FTC’s site in both English and Spanish. Just add your local consumer protection and emergency service contacts, print however many copies you need, and distribute them throughout your community.
And here’s one more thing. Despite the rise in COVID-19 vaccinations, remember these best practices for keeping you and your family “pandemic-safe” during an extreme weather event.
Spot a scam? Report it to the FTC at Reportfraud.ftc.gov to help us stop fraud in its tracks.
0 Comments
Read Our Privacy Act Statement
It is your choice whether to submit a comment. If you do, you must create a user name, or we will not post your comment. The Federal Trade Commission Act authorizes this information collection for purposes of managing online comments. Comments and user names are part of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) public records system, and user names also are part of the FTC’s computer user records system. We may routinely use these records as described in the FTC’s Privacy Act system notices. For more information on how the FTC handles information that we collect, please read our privacy policy.
Comment Policy
This is a moderated blog; we review all comments before they are posted. We expect participants to treat each other and the bloggers with respect. We will not post comments that do not comply with our commenting policy. We may edit comments to remove links to commercial websites or personal information before posting them.
We won’t post:
Comments submitted to this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, please do not include personal information. Also, do not use this blog to report fraud; instead, file a complaint.