ExclusiveSurvivalist EJ Snyder: How to Make a Home Emergency Plan | Special Feature

Hurricane Helene recently swept through and devastated many parts of Appalachia. Families were displaced and homes and businesses were destroyed. But in the face of all this devastation we've seen neighbors come together to help each other out, strangers connecting over shared loss, and communities forming over a common cause to lend a hand to those in need. When I was on the ground in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, I met E.J. Snyder, who you might have seen on TV. He's a survivalist and he's author of the book Emergency Home Preparedness. He was in North Carolina to help out with the relief efforts. In the wilderness, as well as in this event, you're doing shelter and security, water, fire, and food. Those are four critical things that these folks need. And whatever form we can give that to them, we've got to. In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton down in Florida, the issue of survivability has now become all the more important. We talked to E.J. about what to do to prepare for another emergency. E.J. Snyder, you're a survivalist. You've been here in North Carolina with this disaster about two weeks to help the people. Based on your experience and based on what you've seen here, you know, people don't always see a disaster coming. They got to get ready ahead of time. What can people do to prepare for something like this? Well, a few things they can do to prepare and get through something like this. First thing is, it's all about your plan. Planning to get through it, whether you're going to weather it out, and then an escape plan if you got to get out of here. It all starts with what we call PACE. Have a primary, an alternate, contingency, and an emergency. And you plan those four things in PACE for everything. Whether it's the plan, whether it's items. Since you got backups to the backup to the backup. And so it starts with the plan. Having enough supplies on hand, you know, water, food, ways to light the home. Maybe you have a generator ready to go when power goes out. Prescription drugs that you need. Vital batteries for needed medical equipment to keep that running. Then the next thing is, if I can't weather it out here, I got to go. And candles are another big thing for lighting, at least in your home. Once you got a bug out, you need everyone in your family to have some type of a bug out bag. And in there, you want them to have an extra set of clothing, some dry socks, maybe a raincoat's a good thing because it can keep your body warm. Maybe a couple ponchos, a few tarps in case you got to get outside in this elements and it's raining to keep your core body temperature protected. Try to keep yourself dry. And then some of the basics. Not have good water. And I always recommend having a water bottle that filters itself like the grout. That way, if you're getting water from some source and you don't have a way to boil it, you'll know you always have fresh water. But have some fresh water, some food, maybe throw some granola bars in there, some nuts, some jerky, a meal ready to eat, the military type meals or some dehydrated meal. And then a headlamp, maybe a flashlight so you can see where you're going. All those little things you know that you're going to need once you get moving. As well, security. If you're not into firearms, have a VAT, something you're comfortable with using. The other thing people forget about is your vital paperwork. So you want to have that in a big Ziploc bag like a freeze dryer bag. You want to have your marriage licenses, your birth certificates. You want to put your wallet in there. Put some cash in there. When the power goes out and you have no way to get supplies that may be out there, you're going to need cash. And so you put all those things in that Ziploc bag that mean the world to you, along with a little notebook with everybody's address and phone numbers that you love, all your insurance companies, your banks, in case your cell phone doesn't work or you're borrowing somebody else's cell phones. Keep them in waterproof bags because they're very important to people and ways to charge them. Maybe have some power banks, that kind of stuff. You know, that's why I wrote the emergency home preparedness guide to help people out. So when you do bug out, the other thing you need to know is where are you going? So this was a flood zone. So if I was living in this area, I would want to know where's my high ground? Where am I going to? And I would rehearse beforehand with my family before this ever happened. So everyone knew where it was. Look up there, we got a big mountain. If it's flooding here, E.J. Snyder's heading that way because up there somewhere, I'll be able to get above the floodplain. You want to have an escape plan, like this home back here. The water raised up to where, basically where the attic is. And we heard a story about a young man with a seven-year-old girl that ran up into the attic and got up out of the water and the house, for God's will, did not move. And they were, they got out of the flood and they survived. But we found differently in Katrina that people went two floors up, then went to the attic and they drowned in their attic. And you got to have a plan. If you're going to the attic in a flood, make sure you have an axe, a crowbar, a hammer, a way to get a hole in the roof so you can get up to the next level of survivability. Once you get on that roof, you're going to want to have orange flags or something, a mirror to signal with. So if rescue comes, they can come and find you, get you. And lastly, a self-inflatable raft and a life jacket for every member of the household. Because if you decide that water is still coming and you got to go, you want to rather be in a raft going down something moving very quickly and everyone have a life preserver on there to give you a fighting chance in a flood. And so that's pretty much what folks can do in this type of a situation to make sure they give themselves a fair chance of survival. Two weeks now, and I have not seen destruction like this other than the war zone. That's how bad it is. You want to know what Somalia looks like? Just pull up a picture of Ukraine. That's what's going on here. That's how bad it is. That's how bad we need your help. You know, I didn't know what else to do. God spoke in my heart and said, I need people. I need someone. And I said, send me because I got the weather all the leadership skills, the organizational skills and the survival skills to understand how to help people here. And that's why I came. Thank you guys for being here. Because that's the only way they're going to get the right help they need. The only way to cut that time, that timeline down of recovery is to get the word out, get the funds in wherever they're coming from, get the supplies in and we can keep shortening that window. My biggest fear right now is winter's coming. We got people up in those mountains that haven't been reached completely yet. We got to get to them. The challenge with disasters is they sometimes hit without warning. With Hurricane Helene, we saw places hit with floods that few people ever thought would be affected by floods. And this emphasizes the importance of emergency preparedness for any disaster.