akon edwards works with organizations like the red cross to deal with situation just like this. i don t think we can say strongly enough to people, this is serious. what do they have to do to prepare? what people need to do is start to assemble what s called a grandant go bag. this contains all the items you would need to live outside your home. generally speaking some people say 72 hours, but i would say more than that. when we saw it like with katrina, a lot of people were still in distress a week after the event. you want to get together some essentially items in that bag to allow you to survive. our even survive in your home if you don t have power. the prediction is there could be widespread power outages that could go on for a while. that s right. you ve got summer we ve got your important documents, insurance documents, last will and testament, things like that