This post is part of our Hot Springs Ready preparedness series.
September 2026: one post a day
September 1, 2026 marks the start of National Preparedness Month, and the Town of Hot Springs is publishing one Hot Springs NC emergency preparedness post here every day this month. Here is the shape of it. We start with planning basics, then move to kits and supplies, then flooding and landslides, then wildfire and winter storms, and we close on looking out for each other, with a full readiness checklist on September 30, 2026.
Hot Springs NC emergency preparedness: four hazards, and the habits that cover all of them
Hot Springs sits in a narrow river valley, with the French Broad River running through town and River Road tracing its banks, while US 25/70 remains the main route in and out. That setting shapes the risks we should all plan for most: flooding, landslides, wildfire, and winter storms, along with smaller disruptions like traffic delays and things nobody can predict ahead of time.
What Hurricane Helene taught us
After Hurricane Helene in September 2024, this town saw how much difference a little preparation makes. Households with a stocked pantry, copies of important documents, and a plan for reaching family when phones and power are down had an easier time in the weeks that followed. This series is built around that experience.
Want to do more than read along
Every post in the series will be short enough to read in a few minutes and specific enough to act on the same day. You can find the whole series any time at [link to Hot Springs Ready category page]. If you’re part of a church, business, or civic group that wants to get more involved this month, FEMA’s ready.gov has a full National Preparedness Month page with a partner toolkit built for organizations, not just individuals: Ready.gov, National Preparedness Month.
One thing worth doing before the series starts: write down the three phone numbers you would need if your phone were dead and you were using a neighbor’s. Most people cannot recall a single number from memory anymore. That card in your wallet is the foundation everything else in this series sits on.
Tomorrow’s post covers the four hazards behind this month’s series in more detail. If you only take one thing from today, make it this: start now, while the weather’s calm, not after the next storm warning goes out.
Resources mentioned in this post
- Ready.gov, National Preparedness Month: https://www.ready.gov/september