Are you prepared for hurricane season?

Atlantic hur­ri­cane sea­son, which runs from June 1 through Nov. 30, is offi­cial­ly here, and fore­cast­ers with the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA) pre­dict a “near-nor­mal” year with nine to 15 named storms pack­ing winds of 39 mph or high­er. Mete­o­rol­o­gists say as many as four of the storms could become dan­ger­ous Cat­e­go­ry 3, 4 or 5 hur­ri­canes with winds of 111 mph or high­er.

As the guardians of the state’s largest util­i­ty network—more than 75,000 miles of elec­tric dis­tri­b­u­tion lines serv­ing 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple across all 46 counties—South Car­oli­na’s not-for-prof­it elec­tric coop­er­a­tives have emer­gency plans in place to deal with vio­lent weath­er should a hur­ri­cane threat­en the Pal­met­to State. Along with the South Car­oli­na Emer­gency Man­age­ment Divi­sion (SCEMD), co-ops urge all state res­i­dents to have their own plans in place to pro­tect friends, fam­i­ly, pets and prop­er­ty. Here are some use­ful resources:

SC Emergency Manager mobile app

Avail­able for free in the Apple App Store and on Google Play, this handy app links users to every SCEMD resource they need before, dur­ing and after a storm, includ­ing evac­u­a­tion and shel­ter maps and plan­ning check­lists. It even has a use­ful “tools” func­tion that turns your smart­phone into an emer­gency flash­light, sig­nal­ing device and a GPS loca­tor.

SCEMD.org

No smart­phone? No prob­lem. All of the app’s plan­ning resources, maps and links to the lat­est emer­gency infor­ma­tion are avail­able on SCEMD.org. In the case of a hur­ri­cane (or any nat­ur­al dis­as­ter), SCEMD will update the site to pro­vide the best real-time infor­ma­tion users need.

2019 South Car­oli­na Hur­ri­cane Guide

From both the web­site and the app, you can down­load SCEMD’s 2019 South Car­oli­na Hur­ri­cane Guide, a com­pre­hen­sive 14-page book­let filled with tips and resources. To access the guide online, vis­it scemd.org/media/1416/2019-hurricane-guide_website.pdf.

South Carolina Living Storm Center

South Car­oli­na Liv­ing’s storm cen­ter pages are filled with infor­ma­tion to help co-op mem­bers pre­pare for and sur­vive nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. Read­ers will find use­ful how-to guides on build­ing a storm kit, evac­u­at­ing with pets, stay­ing safe when pow­er lines are down, and how to report pow­er out­ages. There’s even a live, statewide out­age map to track the storm dam­age and the sta­tus of repairs in co-op-served ter­ri­to­ries. See all the resources at SCLiving.coop/storm-center.

Source: South Car­oli­na Liv­ing Mag­a­zine