Protecting your family comes down to a simple choice, "Is it safer to stay where you are or is it better to protect your family by leaving the safety of your home or domicile and go to a potentially safer location?"  In business terminology these choices are referred to as the 'Shelter in Place strategy' or the 'Evacuation strategy'.  Which strategy you plan to use will depend on a number of factors including:

• The severity of the threat.
  
• The amount of advance warning you have.
  
• The recommendations of emergency personnel.
  
• Your level of preparation.
  

Let's take a look at a few examples.  If a hurricane is coming towards your town or residence, most families have 2 or 3 days to prepare for the hurricane (depending upon the accuracy of the expected path of the hurricane).  If you are in a tornado watch that turns into a tornado warning, you may only have minutes to react, which translated means "We need to find shelter NOW! (aka Shelter in Place Now)

Now you never know about power outages.  Sometimes the outage lasts minutes, sometimes days.  Just think about Hurricane Maria in 2017 that decimated Puerto Rico.  They had power outages that lasted months as the government slowly had to rebuild it's power infrastructure.  The same situation happened in Texas in February of 2021 when millions of people were stuck in frigid darkness for over three days and longer.  You are often faced with the decision, "Do we ride it out?" (use the Shelter in Place strategy) or "Should we go to another location?" (use the evacuation strategy) and stay at that alternate location until the power returns or its safe to return.

Protecting you and your family comes down to being prepared on two different levels or having the two strategies I've mentioned above.  For these strategies to be the most effective, they need to be set in place before the disaster or threat occurs.  Doing so, minimizes your risk or danger and increases significantly your family's ability to weather, even survive the threat or danger.