With Hurricane Harvey approaching the Gulf Coast, it’s important that everyone has the ability to communicate in the event of major disaster or loss of power.
1. Keep your phones charged at 100%.
2. If you have any cell phone power banks, charge those now.
3. If your power goes off, switch to Lower Power Mode (iPhone)/Power Saving Mode (Samsung)/Battery Saver Mode (general Android) on your phone.
4. If your power goes out, STAY OFF FACEBOOK and out of any unnecessary apps. Don’t use your phone’s flashlight, use an actual flashlight. Your phone is for communication/emergencies. You don’t want to drain it playing around because you’re bored.
5. If there are any news stations that you want to get updates from should your power go out, I want you to send a text message to the short code 40404 (treat it like a phone number). The message you will send is FOLLOW <insert their username>. So, for instance, if you want to follow Channel 11 in Houston, you’d text FOLLOW @KHOU to the phone number 40404. From this point, any Twitter update the station posts will come to you as a text message whether you have a Twitter account or not, whether you have Internet access or not, whether you have a smartphone or not.
For more information about hurricane preparedness, please visit https://www.ready.gov/hurricanes.
