Father's Day Gifts That Keep on Giving—Especially in an Emergency

Father's Day is Sunday, so give your dad a gift that can make a difference to the whole family—a self-powered emergency radio that can be charged with both solar power and a hand crank, giving unlimited power for AM/FM radio, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather channels, emergency lights, cell phone battery life and more.

According to FEMA, another great gift is a weather radio, which transmits alerts of severe weather and dangerous conditions. It broadcasts National Weather Service forecasts, severe weather warnings and watches on impending natural hazards 24 hours a day over the NOAA radio network. Messages are also available in Spanish.

Weather radios are available at electronics stores at prices ranging from $20 to $200 and come as portable or desktop models. FEMA advises looking for the following features when purchasing a radio:

• Alarm tone will produce a special tone to alert you to severe weather
• Specific Area Message Encoding provides highly localized information by filtering out alerts that do not affect your immediate area
• Hand crank, battery or solar powered ensures it will operate during electrical outages
• National Weather Service frequency tuning. To determine the correct alert frequency for your area visit www.nsw.noaa.gov/nwr
• External or wireless output for people who are deaf, hard of hearing or blind, the radio may be connected to an alarm or other attention-getting device, such as a personal computer or text printer

Better yet, learn to use a ham radio—more complicated and you need to be licensed, but it is the best way to learn what is happening in an emergency. There are classes offered by amateur radio clubs and through our own Malibu Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) once you are a member.

There are regular emergency radios for sale all over the Internet and at places like and Target as well as online at Amazon and the Red Cross website. More information be found here.