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National Preparedness Month:
Make a Plan to Prepare for Disasters

Read more to find out:

  • The 5 key questions to start your emergency plan
  • Tips to meet your family’s specific needs
  • What tasks to include in your written plan
  • The value of practicing your plan

Creating a written Emergency Plan can make it easy for all members of your family to know exactly what to do Before, During and After an emergency. Typical modes of communication may be unreliable during a disaster, which is why solidifying the plan with all – including children, people with disabilities, caregivers and out of town contacts – is imperative to disaster preparedness. If you’re familiar with the 5 Ws (and 1 H), these questions will be a good start to your planning:

  1. Who is involved in my family/household communication plan?
  2. When do I need to update my emergency preparedness kit?
  3. How will I receive emergency alerts and warnings?
  4. What is my evacuation route?
  5. Where will I shelter?

Family Specific Considerations

Meet your family’s needs and responsibilities where they are and consider some of these factors when developing your plan:

  • Dietary needs
  • Languages spoken
  • School aged children
  • Pets or service animals
  • Cultural and religious considerations
  • Responsibilities for assisting others
  • Access and functional needs including devices and equipment

Here’s a shortlist of items for your preparedness plan:

  • Complete a written and photographic inventory of your home and its contents

  • Gather your important documents like birth certificates, passports, deeds, and insurance papers and keep them in a fireproof/waterproof box. Keep digital copies stored on your home computer and backed up to the cloud. If you have to, take pictures of the documents.

  • Be smart with tech – make sure your phone is charged in the event of a storm and make sure your chargers are easily accessible

  • Know your options for sheltering at home, in place, or within a mass care shelter

  • Make an emergency evacuation plan for your whole family. And not just at home – any locations you frequently visit such as offices or school

  • If you get told to evacuate in a storm, be ready to do so immediately

Practice Makes Permanent

  • Talk about who will be the lead person to send out information about the designated meeting place for the household.
  • Have each person practice sending a text message or calling your out-of-town contact and sending a group text to your mobile phone group list.
  • Discuss what information you should send by text. You will want to let others know you are safe and where you are. Short messages like “l’m OK. At library” are good.
  • Practice gathering all household members at your indoor and neighborhood emergency meeting places.
  • To show why it´s important to keep phone numbers written down, challenge your household members to recite important phone numbers from memory— now ask them to think about doing this in the event of an emergency.