Birdy safety plans

[LauraO]

With all the hurricanes around, including the two headed for Hawai'i (they are likely to weaken) I've been giving some serious thought about birdy safety plans. I have 19 lovies in 9 cages along with Cookie. We live in a two storie attached house with a garage and I'd love to start mapping out a plan and I'm wondering if anyone has any input or suggestions about what this plan should entail and how the birds should be handled.....

[bellarains]

Laura,

I of course only have three, and we don't get hurricanes, but we do get tornados. My plan is: I keep their travel cages under their cages so that I can pop them in really quick, and I have an inner closet that I keep enough space in to put them if need be. As far as evacuation goes, I could only say do so at first notice, but in your case, I guess you could only go inland. Do you have a place to go?

[linda040899]

Hi Laura,
Safety plans for my birds are a big issue with me, as we have both hurricane, tropical storm, tornado, and electrical storm activity here in FL. Our weather forecasters here have equipment where they can tell almost to the minute where a tornado will be once it's on the ground and moving. Same with electrical or very bad storms. Paying attention to weather forecasts starts my plans. I don't know that I would have enough time to do much except evacuate my aviary if I knew a tornado were heading my way. I know where the safest places are in my house and that's where everyone would go. Inner rooms with no windows are preferrable. Rooms that don't face the direction that the storm is coming from are second choice. My garage is not a consideration, as garage doors don't stay in place very well.

For hurricane preparation, first I make sure I always have lots of extra food, as I never know how long it would be before I could replenish my supply. I keep minimum of an extra 50# on hand and that would only last me a week. I have city water so I could always fill bathtubs, sinks, or even my washing machine with water. While I don't have an extra tank of propane for my grill, I make sure the one I have never goes empty. In the face of mandatory evacuation, all my birds would be placed in carriers for transport. Evacuating early is the key. Florida is a peninsula so our roads leading North get crowded very quickly. I remember a friend of mine on the East coast getting ready to evacuate and it took her something like 6 hours to go 5 miles. She turned around and went back home to ride out the storm. Somewhere in all this, I make sure I have what I need. If I leave me out of the preparations, my birds would have no one to care for them if I can't. You don't necessarily have to do everything at once. I've built up to the level of preparedness I have now. Last yr was a real wake up call!

Hope this helps.

[jknezek]

one other thing you can do is ask at your local bird store. my store down here in south florida just moved to a new location and made a big deal about putting in hurricane shutters. they also outlined that during any hurricane one employee if not more will stay at the store to care for their own birds and any birds brought in for safe storm boarding. Personally, I don't think I would go that route, but it is another option to look into.

[LauraO]

Well we live on an island so there is nowhere to mandatorily evacuate to besides the shelters which are a few miles, at most, from my house. I would think they are no better than just staying put......I have 9 cages plus Cookie and I figure if it gets to the point where we need to hunker down for a storm, I will put everyone in two cages and put Cookie in a smaller cage. We have a great walk in space under the stairs next to the attached wall so it is the most central and secure place and would fit our birds and us in for however long we needed though there wouldn't be any wiggle room. I don't think we are at risk for flooding and luckily our house is built on a little hill over the road. However we do live in a basin so there is always a chance for flooding, which is why I would stay with my birds. If there was flooding we could grab everyone and head to the second floor and the roof if need be. I don't carry extra food though I usually have enough for a couple of weeks on hand. I would make sure to buy more if a warning were to incur. I do want to get at least 5 or 10 gallons of water for storage for the birds. Our water is clean for humans and we could fill everything up before the storm for us so there's no worry there.

They've been having a lot of info in the paper and it's been noted the most dangerous place on Oahu is actually Waikiki, which could get flooding from both the mountains and the ocean. There's not a lot of locals who live there and they say the tourists would just whole up in the hotels. Of course, the North Shore and Windward sides would also scare me. Luckily, we live in good ole Ewa Beach, which is not too near the water or the mountains and 20
miles from Waikiki.

This is definately some food for thought