Family Emergency Plan
Disasters often strike when family members are at work, school or on a jobsite. A simple written plan helps everyone know what to do and how to reconnect.
- Families
Your plan should cover
- Alerts: how you’ll get warnings. Turn on Wireless Emergency Alerts on phones, sign up for local alerts, and keep a weather radio.
- Shelter: where to shelter at home for tornadoes, storms or chemical releases.
- Evacuation: routes out of your area, and where you’ll go (friends, family, a hotel or shelter).
- Meeting places: one near home, and one outside the neighborhood.
- Communication: an out-of-town contact everyone checks in with. Texts often get through when calls don’t.
- Contact cards for each family member, especially children.
- School and daycare plans: know their emergency and pickup procedures.
- Special needs: medicines, mobility equipment, power for medical devices, pets.
Know your local risks
Your plan depends on where you live: hurricanes and floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, winter storms or extreme heat.
Practice and update
- Review the plan with everyone at least once a year.
- Practice fire drills and shelter drills.
- Teach children how and when to call 911.
- Know how to shut off utilities. See How to Shut Off Utilities.
Standards & references
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