Prepare Your College Students
Last year as I was preparing to write an article I contacted several universities and asked them about their preparations. It was a great experience. It was reassuring to know most are very well prepared. One of the universities I contacted was Brigham Young University in Hawaii. Ironically the next week they had an earthquake in Hawaii and students there were without electricity for a few days. They had plans in place to care for the student’s needs and they worked their plan. During Katrina there were several universities affected and students displaced. Some campuses were prepared, some not. The common response I received from all the colleges I spoke with was that all students should come to school with a 72 hour kit, prepared to meet their own needs for a few days. One small private college in Virginia was the only school prepared to feed students if an emergency should arise.
Schools were also very concerned about student travel. Many had experienced the death of students as they became involved in weather related accidents while traveling between home and school. With high school seniors graduating in the next few weeks it is a good time to consider a college/car kit as a graduation gift. Of course I like the ones at Totally Ready but do some research and compare the items and the quality of those items. Be careful of kits sold by resellers. In other words, if you see the same kits on several sites you know they were not designed by the owners of that site and therefore may not be specific enough to the needs of a student.
As we have witnessed recently and consistently over the past few years we are in a cycle of increasing natural disasters. Don’t let students you love get caught unprepared.
