What To Do If You’re Caught In A Monsoon

The monsoon is defined as a season of prevailing wind and rain that occurs in southeastern Asia, parts of Africa and Australia, and the southwestern United States.

Regardless of where you currently are in the world, the monsoon season is not something that you want to take lightly. Thousands of people tragically die from it every year, so in this article, we’ll discuss how you can prepare for a monsoon and what you can do to survive should you be caught in the middle of one.

Preparing For A Monsoon

The best thing you can do concerning a monsoon is to prepare for it before it actually happens. If you live in an area that has a monsoon season each year, you need to have a monsoon disaster preparedness kit for your family in your home.

 

This kit should consist of the following materials, at minimum:

  • At least one gallon of water per person per day
  • A complete first aid kit with prescription medications
  • Long lasting food that does not need refrigeration (canned meat and vegetables, rice, beans, etc)
  • Generator
  • Plywood, plastic sheeting, and sandbags to protect your home from the rain and flooding
  • Flashlights with spare batteries
  • Bug out bag (should you need to evacuate)
  • CB radio

When the actual monsoon season comes, you need to be on high alert for signs of high winds, flooding, rain, and any other bad conditions that exist. To this end, do the following on a continuous basis:

  • Always be looking at the skies for signs of incoming dangerous weather
  • Listen to weather reports via the NOAA weather radio
  • Watch the weather forecasts on your TV or online

Be Prepared For Water…Lots Of Water

If one thing can be said about the monsoon, it’s that it will be extremely wet. When the rain begins, do not expect any streets in your town to go without unflooding. The rain is going to alternate between a light drizzling to a torrential downpour, but throughout the duration of the wet part of the monsoon season it will not stop raining.

 

 

Seek Shelter

As soon as the monsoon begins, the very first thing you need to do is to seek out shelter. Whether it be during a thunderstorm or when it’s actually raining, you need to get indoors as soon as possible.

Tall trees do not count as shelter. The reason why is because they will be prime targets for lightning or could even fall over in the event of intense and rapid flooding. Rather, you need to get indoors into a secure building such as your shelter.

 

Somewhere else that you will want to avoid is the power lines. Not only could the power lines actually fall over and injure or perhaps even kill you, but they will also still have a charge that could potentially electrocute you.

If you have children or pets with you, immediately get them off of the streets and indoors with you. Keep a watchful eye on them at all times.

What To Do When The Power Goes Out

Once you get you and your family indoors to your house, be prepared for the power to go out at any minute if it hasn’t already. Prepare for the power outage by shutting off the following:

  • Air Conditioners
  • Home Appliances
  • Computers
  • TVs

Also plug up your sinks and bathtubs and begin filling them up with clean water right away before either the water becomes shut off or otherwise becomes contaminated. Even if you already have lots of water stored away like we mentioned above, you still will want to have as much water stored as possible.

 

 

Another way to collect water is the rainwater. Set up a rain catchment system outside to begin collecting as much of this falling rainwater as you can. Simply setting up clean buckets or tying a tarp or plastic sheeting between two or three trees are just a couple ideas of what you can do to collect rainwater.

You also need to take steps to protect your electronic devices as well. Even though you may assume that your electronics will be kept safe and dry within your own home, the truth is you can’t be too careful. Take your phones, cameras, tablets, computers, radios, and any other electronic devices (along with any power cords) you have and store them in properly sealed plastic bags.

Stay Away From The Streets

The streets are definitely going to become flooded, and you will want to avoid them at all costs. It only takes a mere six inches of water to cause an average sized person to become off balanced and be swept away in the torrent, and a mere foot of water to send a car downstream as well.

This means that not only will there be intense flooding, but there will be lots of debris being swept downstream as well, so even if the flooding doesn’t kill you the debris and wreckage being carried downstream will.

 

 

Furthermore, the flooding waters are going to become extremely contaminated and any sense of proper sanitation is going to go out the window. Chemicals, trash/garbage, random junk, oils, dead animals, feces, and urine are just a sample of the things that you can expect to find in flooding waters during the monsoon season.

This is yet another reason why storing enough water in your home is so critical. The flooding waters are not going to be safe to drink at all, so the rainwater you collect and the water you already have stored will be the only water available for you to drink.

Conclusion

By following the tips you have learned in this article, you and your family will be able to survive a monsoon season. Even though thousands tragically die from the monsoon season each year, the truth is the vast majority of those people are those who did not take the proper precautions beforehand. Now that you know what those precautions are, you can begin to take action to prepare yourself for the next monsoon season.

 

 

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nick-oetken

nick-oetken is one of the authors writing for Outdoor Revival