Be Ready for Winter

Readiness at Home
Disasters can occur in any season, but according to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, some of the most common disaster risks in winter are storms and extreme cold. These can knock out heat, power, and communications services to your home and office and make travel exceptionally difficult.

Visit the Federal Emergency Management Agency website for a comprehensive checklist, but to start:

Prepare Your Home & Car

Insulate walls, windows, and pipes
Allow faucets to drip slowly to avoid freezing
Fill your car's gas tank
Check your car's tire treads, antifreeze levels, battery, and windshield wiper equipment

Create an Emergency Supply Kit

To prepare your family, stock your home with items like:

Non-perishable food, water, extra flashlights, and batteries
Rock salt or environmentally-safe products to melt ice on walkways
Sand to improve traction
Snow shovels and other snow removal equipment
Warm clothing and blankets
Your Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts ID card

Readiness at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
In the event of a disaster, our focus at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will be to accomplish these six priorities:

Enable continued access to care for our members
Ensure the safety and wellbeing of our employees
Maintain financial stability in order to continue to administer care
Support constituents with information
Recover and normalize business operations
Support community-based response and recovery efforts

Our preparations have already made a difference for our members. For example, our upgraded computer network makes it easy for our employees to work remotely, which has allowed us to serve our customers through snow emergencies when many other businesses were forced to close.

For more information, please see the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Disaster Readiness statement.