Emergency Contact Cards Form - Northwestern: Fill & Download for Free

When I was eighteen, I set off alone for college in the Chicago area in 1965. To that point in my life I had only been outside of Minnesota a handful of times on family trips and had never even dreamed of going as far away as Chicago, which was about 630 miles southeast of my home town on the Canadian border.My father drove me after breakfast to the Greyhound bus station at the Rex Hotel in downtown International Falls and handed me an extra 20 dollar bill to hide in my sock in case I had a emergency. The Greyhound dropped me off at the bus depot in Minneapolis, a place that years later became the First Avenue concert venue made famous by Prince.A great aunt and her husband picked me up at the depot and brought me to their home in St. Louis Park where I enjoyed a wonderful meal with people I had met at family reunions in the past. During the early evening, they brought me to the railroad depot where I was to pick up the night train to Chicago. In this era before deregulation of the airlines, almost nobody flew to college. I bought the ticket and carried my suitcase into the train. It is full of students from the Midwest heading eastwards for college and I stayed up most of the night talking to several who turned out to be cousins of a friend from Bemidji.I had never seen anything like the Chicago that welcomed me when I walked out of the Union Station in the morning. If this had been an era of mobile phones, I would have walked the several blocks to the Chicago and Northwestern Station, but I had been told that it made sense to hire a taxi, my first taxi ride ever. The driver groaned when I told him my destination but got me there in minutes and I gave him a small tip, probably too small.The most exciting part of the whole trip was taking the commuter train from Chicago westwards to Wheaton, my new home. I was dead tired and thought the trip would never end as we stopped in places like Oak Park, Bellwood, Melrose Park, Glen Ellyn and finally Wheaton. I immediately headed for the tallest tower on the horizon with my suitcase (this was before wheeled suitcases) and discovered to my dismay that I had walked to the town hall, not the college. It was in another direction.I reached the campus about 45 minutes after the train ride and was met as I stepped foot onto campus by the football coach and the person who would be one of my freshmen roommates. It was pure happenstance. They walked me to my room where I deposited my stuff and college life began immediately.I shudder to think of making a trip of this sort without a phone, a credit card, or any contacts at the Chicago end. I probably would not undertake it today, but as that 18 year old, I lived in a world that had been formed by a lifetime in a small, stable town. The trip did nothing to disconfirm the feeling of protectiveness that I had grown up with. Scores of things could have gone wrong that day; they just didn’t. My mother was always convinced that her prayers were answered; I’ll leave it at that.

Evacuate 50 to 200 miles inland, depending upon the hurricane and its predicted path, upon terrain and elevation, and the quality of your shelter. This will get you out of the worst winds and away from the immediate coastal storm surge. Driving along the coast is generally not a good idea, except for getting to a road that goes inland, because hurricane tracks are hard to predict, and because storm surge and wind may damage coastal roads and traffic signals well before hurricane landfall. Be aware also that hurricanes have a more dangerous quadrant for wind strength, which for our northern hemisphere Gulf and Atlantic hurricanes is the upper left, northwestern quadrant.Distance is not the only important consideration. Terrain and elevation are important because much of the danger of a hurricane comes from torrential rains and flooding. You absolutely want to be above and away from water courses, low-lying ground, and floodplains. However, even areas that don't usually flood could become inundated during a hurricane. Houstonians learned this the hard way during Hurricane Harvey when areas flooded that had never been known to flood ever before.Also, consider logistics of your refuge site. Is it on a crowded evacuation route that is likely to run out of gasoline or diesel or other essentials early during an evacuation? Is your escape place sturdily built? Does it have backup power? Does it already have food and emergency supplies? Is it in potential danger from falling trees? Is it within walking distance of emergency services? (Roads may be impassable, even for fire trucks.)Of course, don't forget to have important items with you… prescriptions/pills, pets (pet food, pet meds, water dishes, crate/kennel, leash/harness), plastic (credit cards and cash), important papers, identification to allow you to return home after the storm, phone (tablet, laptop, charger, batteries, important phone numbers including insurance company), flashlights, precious items and pictures (including pictures of your home and contents), a copy of motel reservations if applicable. Water, snacks, solar or battery or hand crank radio, fuel can, rain gear/boots, solar charger, entertainment… book, deck of cards, whatever. If networks fail, a paper road map might help with finding alternate routes to refuge. Consider also that it's hard to predict just when you will be able to return home.And be in contact with someone well outside the storm zone who can relay news to and from you. If your place of refuge is in an urban area fairly close to the storm, be aware that cell phone networks could be overloaded or damaged. In that case, text messages may get through when more data-hogging messages fail.

IMO one of the prime reasons are political parties. The second is the press. The third is arrogance.Let's face it. Controversy gets people fired up to vote (take action). If we can get people divided they'll pick sides then it becomes us vs. them. So issues are couched in outlandish statements in order to portray those with different ideas as the enemy.An example: “Conservatives and the NRA want to see our children murdered by assault weapons.” That's moronic! Our kids are in those schools too. We want them safe just as much as you do. But we want measures that are effective. Not some stupid sign claiming schools are a gun free zone or enacting more stupid and inneffective laws against inanimate objects. Time and time again we've seen one inneffective gun law fail only to see another inneffective gun law thats even more restrictive added to the first.Maybe we should do what our politicians and Hollywood celebrities do when they feel threatened … hire armed security. Simple but effective.Another favorite is border security: I have no problem with legal immigration. Nor does anyone I know. But let me bring up a personal issue here. One of our kids was a victim of identity theft. An illegal in AZ was using our kid's SSN. Our kid lived in MT. The IRS hounded the mercilessly about unreported income even though the IRS had work records if both parties and work schedules where they both worked on the same days. That's 1500 miles apart! They kept their tax refunds and threatened to garnish wages, sieze assets in the bank and personal property and take their home. We contacted every federal agency trying to get it stopped (Obama era) and none would take it. Our two Democrat senators ignored us. It was our lone Republican representative who assigned an aide and got a tax advocate assigned. They finally got things cleared up. We had a reporter looking into it in AZ. Her team tracked the guy down and staked out his house. When he got home he suddenly couldn't speak English. When she switched to Spanish he clammed up and wouldn't speak without a lawyer present.Our kids were lucky. The reporter told us that sometimes these people file for refunds first and steal those. Others get a bunch of credit cards and loans then default, ruining your credit.As far as we know he's still out there. Our kids have a code they use when filing their taxes. This guy is most likely still out there fleecing people.We have a friend who is an emergency room nurse in Texas. They are jammed with illegals bringing in their kids with communicable diseases. We have a friend who is a former school administrator who has documented the staggering cost illegals in his state cost the taxpayers. Those studies you read about how illegals contribute more than they cost is BS.We need secure borders now and then true reform in our immigration system. We are all being victimized by illegal immigration.I was surprised way back when President Trump stated that the Democrats didn't want to solve the Dreamers issue. But he was right! The Democrats need the controversy to energize their voting base.The examples are endless. Our political parties need division to keep getting elected.The media needs division. The press has never been non-partisan. Read newspapers published during any time in our history. They all chose sides. One difference however, is that they used to take pride in being factual. That's no longer true.Many years ago I wrote guest columns in a local paper. It was a college town and they were a liberal paper. I asked the editor why there were no conservative slanted articles in the paper. My theory was that all reporters were liberals. He said that there were conservative reporters out there but their articles would not appear in his paper. He then took me to the AP computer and began perusing articles. He showed me which would be printed in his paper and which would not. I asked if he thought that they had a duty to remain neutral and print all sides of an issue. He laughed (not evilly, he was one of the few liberals I had met who could actually discuss an issue without resorting to name calling), and said that was what the Op-ed page was for. Let the conservative papers publish conservative articles.Anyone who gets their information from one side of the press only is seriously misinformed! Anyone who summarily disses one side of the press is ignorant by choice. You don't have to swallow everything published in the press but you do need to understand that both the left and right are going to give their side only. The bad thing is when they take the First Amendment as a license to lie.Have you ever wondered why the press has never taken accusation of fake news to court? It's because they don't want standards of legal accuracy applied to them. It benefits the press to be able to spin the “truth” to accommodate their own agendas. The left and right are both guilty.In any case, controversy sells papers and advertising.Third … arrogance! There are actually people who believe that they are smart enough to tell other people how to live their lives. Not only that, they want to use the government as their enforcer!There are actually people in southern California who think that they should dictate how the people of northwestern Montana should live.There are people in Washington D. C. who think that they can make one-size-fits-all laws for the people in Wyoming.There are valid reasons that the founders of this country envisioned a weak federal government!If you think you know better how to live my life than I do you are part of the problem. The same goes for me. (Except I'm not trying to dictate how Californians should live.)