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You're listening to LifeKit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mariel.

There are some tasks that we know as adults we're supposed to do to prepare for some possible

or even inevitable event, but we keep pushing

them off because we don't want to think about that event happening. It's too bleak.

Preparing for possible illness or death comes to mind here. Writing a will, choosing a health

care proxy, a state planning. Who wants to think about that stuff? Another task I would add to this category

is emergency planning. It's terrifying to think about a disaster, like a hurricane, a flood, or a wildfire

hitting your neighborhood or your home. And so especially when it's all blue skies and sunshine

outside, we just kind of go, la, la, la, la, la, nothing's happening.

Nothing's ever going to happen.

You may have a forecast, but it's not really going to strike you until the moment is upon you.

And by then, it's too late.

Alyssa Provencio is a professor at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Her teaching and research focus is

emergency and disaster management. And she says, yeah, those blue skies can change and you don't want to be

...