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Is your mobile device ready for emergencies?

Make sure all your personal electronic devices are fully charged before severe weather.

As part of National Preparedness Month, the Postal Service is encouraging employees to prepare their personal mobile devices for emergency events.

Technology can be unreliable if the device has no power or contains outdated emergency contact information.

Here are a few tech-savvy tips for your personal devices:

• Current contacts: Keep your contacts updated and synced across all your channels. This will make it easy to reach out to the right people quickly to get information and give updates.

• Sign up: Before a disaster, follow trusted government agencies and weather apps to stay up-to-date with official and accurate information before, during and after a disaster.

• Charge: Prior to severe weather, make sure all your personal electronic devices are fully charged. If the power goes out, save battery power by minimizing device use or changing settings to low power mode. Keep a backup power source on hand, to include a portable charger in your car.

• Text rather than call: Text messages require less bandwidth than phone calls, which makes the communication more reliable during emergency situations.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Ready.gov website has additional tips on being tech ready.