Hurricane Irma: tips for staying connected

As Florida braces for Hurricane Irma and possible severe weather in the Tampa Bay area, AT&T is encouraging residents to check and update their emergency communication plans.

As the storm looms, this is the times to update and practice your communication plan with family members.

AT&T recommends the following tips for residents:

• Have a family communications plan. Choose someone out of the area as a central contact. Make sure all family members know who to contact if they get separated. Most importantly, practice your emergency plan in advance.
• Capture and store pictures or videos of your home's contents before the storm. These can be just as important as pictures of damages when you need to place a claim to your insurance company.
• Use the Cloud to store important information. Personal, financial and medical records can be bulky and hard to carry. Scanning or capturing photos of these documents and saving in a cloud server will protect them and allow you to access from anywhere you have an internet connection.
• Plan on keeping your phones and tablets dry and charged. If power is interrupted, having a plan to keep your devices charged will give you peace of mind that you can stay connected during the storm. Portable chargers with capacity to charge multiple devices and car chargers are good choices.
• Saving battery life. Using the Power Save Mode on your device can help you get more connected time on your device. Power Save Mode limits some of the device’s performance to conserve battery life.
• Program all of your emergency contact numbers and e-mail addresses into your mobile phone. Numbers should include the police department, fire station and hospital, as well as your family members.