Emergency Preparedness
Are you ready? If a disaster was to strike your family or community, are you prepared to face those challenges? If you’re like me, you probably haven’t thought too much about it. We often like to think those things won’t happen to us, but what will you do if it does? Alaska is big and beautiful and wild, that’s what attracts so many of us to live here, but this magnificent environment also presents a wide array of natural dangers.
In August of 1992 I experienced my first major natural disaster as an adult… Hurricane Andrew. The storm battered South Florida and the damage was extensive throughout the region, full recovery for the area took more than a decade. Fast forward to 2024, now I live in Alaska (about as far from South Florida as you can get) and in my short time here I’ve seen floods, fires, earthquakes, violent storms and an unfortunate number of landslides and avalanches effect the state. But emergencies aren’t limited to natural disasters, losing a family member or close friend is a disaster to those effected. All of this got me thinking, what can True North – a credit union, do to help with emergency preparedness.
This thought process led us to create the True North Financial First Aid Kit, a simple to use set of checklists and fillable forms that will help you get organized and prepared to put your life back together quickly. It will be a small investment of your time to work through the checklists which will direct you to collect any important information and include it with your Kit. We’ve broken down the Kit into manageable sections so you can set a little time aside and work on it one section at a time, before you know it, your Kit will be complete! The Kit is available via download on the True North website.
Being prepared is a choice and that choice is yours and yours alone. The Financial First Aid Kit is a wonderful tool to help, but it is up to you to take control and complete it.