We missed our Disaster Preparedness Month report last night – and there was no time to catch up in the early morning, because we started the day covering a sizable West Seattle power outage. So that set the tone for tonight’s advice: First, from the fabulous West Seattle Be Prepared website: What to do (and not to do) when the power goes out. But what you need in case of an outage may be very personal – depending on what you’d need to get along for a while without power – in our case, for example, it’s extra laptop batteries – so think ahead of time about what you’d really need, and have it standing by. It may be something simple, like one suggestion we got – this morning’s outage left people unable to run their coffeemakers, but if they’d had some packets of instant coffee set aside, they could have had something stopgap before leaving the house. As for the practical items, a suggested “lights-out kit” list is here. And here are your must-do get-prepared online assignments: Join the West Seattle Be Prepared group on Facebook; take the “3 to Get Ready” challenge (WSB sponsor – with prizes!); know your Emergency Communication Hub. (WSB photo above from December 2006)