Emergency Planning for Families
Do you know what your family will do in an emergency? Have you thought through the details? Have you practiced the plan with your family?
The good news: it’s pretty easy to keep your family prepared for the vast majority of life’s challenges. You do a lot every day to keep your family safe from day-to-day risks. You wear your seatbelts, drive safely, keep your car insurance current, etcetera. But are you prepared for a natural disaster? A fire? A power outage? More good news: The big stuff is easy to prepare for. It all comes down to basically 2 choices: Shelter in Place or Evacuate.
Let’s talk for a few minutes about making a plan for your family. I promise it will be the most worthwhile thing you do today.
The next 8 pages are taken from my book “When All Else Fails,” a family preparedness guide I wrote: because trying to find useful information in a world of panic and prepper is difficult.
Shelter in place
Sheltering in place is by far the most effective and safest method of getting through most emergencies in the short-term: familiar surroundings, community, and all of your supplies in one place.
Evacuate
Evacuating your home comes with inherent risks, but in some cases may be necessary. You will reduce your supplies dramatically to whatever you can carry, and lose the safety and security of your known community and neighbors. Use the cost/benefit analysis here to develop plans so that these decisions are not made in the heat of the moment. We’ll talk about plan development in a minute…
If you have to evacuate, do so early and quickly. You don’t want to have to spend an hour shopping (hoping) for supplies after something happens, and in major disasters, the roads are quick to get congested, making travel impossible shortly after disasters The trick to evacuation is to be able to leave fast, leave first.
Evacuation Locations
“Have somewhere to go before you need to leave.”
If you need to evacuate, you will need a safe location to evacuate to. These locations are commonly referred to as bug out locations. It is not good practice to wander aimlessly once you have had to abandon your home; you must have a plan. In most cases, a family member living in another region is the best plan for regional emergencies and natural disasters. This basically means that you pack your vehicle according to plan, meet up at the designated meeting location, and then travel to your family member’s home for a brief stay until the situation is resolved.
This brings us to a good point: The preparations you are making may be needed by a family member in a different region if they need to evacuate to your home. This is why I store more supplies than my household needs.
Emergency action plan (EAP)
“Simple is best.”
Most businesses have a documented Emergency Action Plan. These plans are basically a collection of procedures to follow in the event of an emergency, having the major objectives thought out ahead of time to make sure important details aren’t missed in the moment. It makes sense to use this model for your family as well.
Risk Analysis:
Decide what threats are likely and worth planning for using the risk analysis process. This will allow you to keep preparations relevant to your situation, find common needs between them, and keep them as simple as possible. Once the likely threats have been established, design an Emergency Action Plan for each one, based upon the needs of the situation. Remember the two Options: Evacuate or Shelter in Place.
Building the Emergency Action Plan
An Emergency Action Plan should be developed for each threat that you have deemed credible in your threat assessment. Each scenario will have slightly different actions to take, based upon the situation. Let’s break down the different parts of a plan:
a) Meeting/Evacuation locations
b) Evacuation Procedures
a. Communication
b. Routes/ETA to locations
c. Contingency Plans
c) Shelter in Place procedures
a. Communications
b. Contingencies
Evacuation Procedures
Evacuation Locations: An Emergency Action Plan should cover a few places to meet, dependent on the situation. For example: agreeing on a close (on the property), medium (in town), and far (out of state) gathering location are a simple and effective method. Evacuation Locations are places where you are welcome and comfortable in waiting out a disaster recovery.
Route: Stating the routes are important so that you can have a better chance of finding someone who did not arrive at the designated location at the ETA.
Communication: Call or message the person at the evacuation location. Call or message everyone in the plan to make sure they are clear on what to do, and that the plan has been initiated. Keep current pictures of family members in your phone in case someone is lost or missing.
Make sure everyone involved is on the same page with the Estimated Time of Arrival: ETAs are important so that you know if something has gone wrong with the evacuation plan. Someone should be expecting you at a certain time at your destination, and can call authorities if you don’t arrive with the route and starting location of your trip.
Ensure that contingencies are considered, as best as possible. You can reasonably expect phone lines to become congested in a large regional emergency, so have a plan in case your family loses communication. This brings us to the next point:
Document and Share the plan: Your plan should be printed and kept with your emergency supplies, so that it is not forgotten in an emergency, and can be referenced if necessary. It is vital that everyone involved in the plan is literally on the same page: no room for misunderstandings or confusion here. Each Bug Out Bag has a copy of this plan included in it.
Shelter in Place Procedures
A shelter in place situation makes things a lot easier for planning. All of your supplies are with you, and your day to day routine is more less likely to be affected.
Immediate safety actions come first, to protect people from harm: Shelter in a closet for a tornado, or a doorway for an earthquake. Whatever your threats and hazards are, train for them.
After the threat has passed, check on everyone. Treat any injuries, report yourself safe to your relatives, contact authorities as needed.
Next, go through the list of utilities that should be turned off (as applicable). Secure the property: cover holes in the roof, board up broken windows, etc. Make the situation safe and stable.
Next, make sure all of your insurance and identification documents are present, and begin the process of recovery.
Practice and refine
Make sure everyone knows what the plan is. Go to the actual evacuation locations to reinforce and test the plan. Practice each plan regularly, and update as better options become available. Practice immediate safety drills often, like the common fire drill. Make sure children can operate difficult door locks and such, and have them actually act out the entire drill. Practice sheltering in closets, so that children know how to deal with the emergency supplies in the closet. Make sure children can dial 911, and that they have access to your mobile phone.
Regular practice is critical to the success of emergency preparedness. The good news is that practicing these techniques for evacuation and testing your plans is as easy as visiting relatives, and/or scheduling regular camping/hiking trips.
If you like the outdoors, each time you go camping, bring less and less gear, and combine the techniques you have learned with new ones to test their effectiveness. The objective is to become as efficient as possible. Lose whatever gear didn’t work, keep what did. Replace broken and worn gear. Teach your family a new skill or two each time you go camping. Eat the food in your kit and replace it upon returning so that you can keep it fresh.
Emergency Plan
Resources
FEMA has a great wealth of knowledge available for family preparedness, including preparedness lists, practices, and resources.
https://www.ready.gov/make-a-plan
Buy the Book
If you found this article useful, please consider browsing our selection of publications at our website:
