What Do You Do When Disaster Occurs?
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Written By Stacey Chillemi
visit our site at: www.inspirationallivingonline.com
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Your past life has been disrupted by a disaster that has entered your life unwillingly. This unfortunate disaster has is now a part of your life and has affected you emotionally.

Today is the present. What can we do to help us get through today and survive the future ahead of us? It is survival of the fittest. So now it is time to prepare yourself emotionally and physically so you can get through the days ahead. This means you need to gain knowledge and start learning now incase disasters such as “Hurricane Katrina” or any other disaster hits you.

When a disaster occurs psychological effects may not hit hurricane victims right away because they are in shock of what has happened. So you may have the strength to get through it and ability to think clearly, so you can get through it.

But once the kaous is over, you suddenly realize what you went through, what your present life has suddenly become, and what lies ahead for the future.
The emotional triumph after surviving a disaster is nothing to be taken calmly. Watch out for someone you care about who may be feeling these symptoms after the disaster has occured:

• Grief, mourning, depression, or despair
• Anxiety, nervousness, or confusion
• Feelings of helplessness and vulnerability
• Social withdrawal or paranoia
• Insomnia or persistent nightmares
• Moodiness or being easily angered or aroused
• Difficulties concentrating and memory loss
• Increased drug and alcohol use

Coping Tips
Over the years through research there have been many useful techniques that have been created to cope with disaster. Preparing yourself for what you can do after a disaster has occurred can help you recover quicker, so you can get on with your life and patch up the holes the disaster has caused you.

• Keep a journal: Express you emotions, thoughts wand feelings. This will help you release any feelings such as hurt or anger that has built up inside.

• Try to talk to others to get support and feedback especially from others that can relate to you.
• Recovering emotionally will strengthen you emotionally, physically and spiritually.

• You have entered a disaster, but life has not entered. You need to focus on yourself and ways to make yourself happy. You are still allowed to smile and laugh. You need to heal emotionally.

• You need to get sleep and get well.
• Practice self-relaxation exercises such as relaxation breathing.

• Do not seclude yourself from the world. You need to socialize with others. Focuses on the disaster will make you fall in depression and your tragedy will become even worse and your path to recovery will take longer.

• Remember no one is perfect. We do not need to live a perfect life in order to succeed and be a winner in life.

Research shows that many victims of a disaster may develop lasting depression, anxiety, and other emotional problems. Luckily, in most cases, many symptoms gradually go away over in a couple of weeks following the disaster.

Safety Tips

If you are in a disaster such as a storm or hurricane and you can't get bottled water and tap water safety is questionable, purify your drinking water. Here are three ways to do that:

• Boil water for one to three minutes.
• If you can't boil water, add eight drops (an eighth of a teaspoon) of newly purchased, unscented liquid household bleach per gallon of water, stir it well, and let the water stand for 30 minutes before you use it. This should get rid of any bacteria in the water but won't kill parasites.

• Water-purifying tablets are another option. Look for them at pharmacies or sporting goods stores.

Food Safety
If flooding has happened, immediately evaluate your supply of stored food and water.

Perishable items (like meat, poultry, milk, seafood, and eggs) that are not properly frozen or refrigerated may make people sick, even if those foods are cooked thoroughly.

Don't eat any food that's come into contact with floodwater.

Throw out food that's not in a waterproof container if there's any chance floodwater touched it. That includes food containers with screw caps, snap lids, and home-canned foods.

Undamaged, commercially canned foods can be saved. Here's how:

• Remove the labels
• Thoroughly wash the cans
• Disinfect the cans with a quarter of a cup of bleach per gallon of water.
• Relabeled the cans with a marker. Include the expiration date.

Get rid of wooden cutting boards, plastic utensils, baby-bottle nipples, and pacifiers. They can't be safely cleaned if they've been touched by floodwater.
Thoroughly wash metal pans, ceramic dishes, and utensils with soap and hot water. Then sanitize them by boiling in clean water or immersing them for 15 minutes in a solution of a quarter of a cup of chlorine bleach per gallon of water.

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