Last week I wrote about the incoming Hurricane Dorian and how it looked like it was about to create a moment when we had to remember the necessity of binding together in our shared humanity to help those who needed aid. Since then, we have seen images from the Bahamas showing a path of destruction that is absolutely devastating and heart breaking.

So consider this another reminder/plea to help to the best of your ability.

Much of what touches us about such scenes is a natural empathy. We don’t need to hear personal stories to immediately understand the feelings one would have when faced with such a situation, to find so much of what was yours destroyed. Take it as a warning then to make sure you are doing what you can to make it through such a situation if you are ever faced with such misfortune.

This doesn’t come from any prepper standpoint. There can certainly be some wisdom in making sure your home is provisioned with food and water that could survive without electricity, but it is not my place to give such advice there. I can, however, urge that you keep your finances in mind when it comes to imagining such events.

For instance, do you have all necessary documents backed up somewhere? It is a good thing to keep key documents in containers that can survive calamity, but it can also only take a minimal amount of time and effort to see that you have digital backups. This can be even more key for a business, because it could take many hours to reconstruct your books if you lose paper documents or a computer where you kept the only copy of your company’s financial file.

I don’t want to list out everything you may want to think about when it comes to preparing for disasters, but here is a link to a short IRS YouTube video that can help you continue brainstorming about actions you should take.

And sure, videos made by the IRS don’t sound like the greatest way to spend your time. I am frequently deeply involved with issues concerning the agency and I never want to fire up some popcorn and settle on the couch to take in some tax information. Such things, however, are great for communicating important information via media that can reach a lot of people. This is actually something that the IRS is pretty good at.

The agency has even prepared this web page that aggregates information about Hurricane Dorian. There is not a lot on the page, for thankfully the storm did not carry the same level of destruction to the United States, so necessary IRS actions were minimal. But it is still good to know that such actions are taken when needed and the government communicates them to the public in multiple ways.

So just know such things exist, take some preparedness actions if needed, and let’s all hope together that it won’t be necessary to have such discussions many more times throughout the rest of the year.