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Creating a family emergency plan is FREE. It takes less than a half hour. No excuses, people.
Do It.
Now.
This is the time to establish 2 things:
Most of us probably haven’t experienced an emergency where we were separated from our family and unable to communicate with them. In a day where we can literally contact anyONE, at any TIME, it is almost incomprehensible that we would ever be put in a situation where that option would be taken from us. But those circumstances DO exist, so keep reading to find out how to make sure your entire family is on the same page.
I say printed because your Emergency Plan should cover all sorts of information. Don’t worry – we are getting to the point where I will provide you with a recap. It will be a checklist of things to go over as a family and ensure everything is up to standard and everyone knows what to do in certain emergencies. But you don’t want your Family Emergency Plan to be 20 pages long. Your kids aren’t going to be able to run and grab the Family Emergency Plan to read how to pop out the screen on their bedroom window if they wake up to a house fire.
So even though your Family Emergency Plan covers all sorts of things, most of them have already been covered in previous blog posts or will be covered soon.
This post is just about collecting all emergency phone numbers and deciding on safe places.
This list should include:
Having a local contact is important because if someone can’t get through to a family member, or if someone doesn’t have access to a phone, everyone would know who to contact (and go to their home if necessary), who could then give information on the rest of the family.
I know this doesn’t seem very probable, but it happens. If there is a long-term power outage that accompanies a certain type of disaster and your phone is dead, how are you going to charge it to get in touch with your family? At least this way you would know where to go for information (assuming your home is unsafe).
If there were a local/statewide emergency, it may be easier to call out of state than in the area of the emergency. If phone lines are so tied up that you can’t contact your own family because you are all in the same city, having an out-of-state contact would be invaluable. But you’ve all got to know who that person is! It is also helpful to have a contact for other extended family to be able to call with questions and concerns, without bothering you, who is in the thick of the emergency situation.
Where are your “safe meeting places” if you get separated in an emergency?
If your house catches fire in the middle of the night, and the fire is inbetween your bedroom and your kids’ bedroom, you already have a need for an emergency plan. Do your kids know what to do? Do they know how to get out of their bedroom window without your help? Hopefully they do, but if not go review this blog post all about preparing your family for a house fire.
But now what? Where should they go?
This way, the kids aren’t hanging out in the backyard watching their house burn to the ground, while you are frantically running up and down the street looking for them. Decide on a spot that everyone knows. It could be a specific neighbor’s driveway, the mailbox a few houses down, a certain corner, etc.
This is in case your whole street isn’t safe. Try to pick somewhere familiar that is a couple streets away. A neighborhood park, a group of mailboxes, a friend’s house, etc.
What if your whole neighborhood is unsafe? It is good to have a friend’s house who lives a few neighborhoods away, a store, a church, or somewhere familiar to meet up.
This would be a place where you could meet up if you or your spouse were traveling and couldn’t come home, due to disaster.
Just FYI, the Red Cross suggests picking 2 emergency meeting places…
I chose to add two more places on our plan, to get a little more specific. If you think that’s over-the-top, that’s okay. No hard feelings. You can go with what Red Cross says. I just like to be overly prepared.
You’ll want to talk through the route to get to each safe place, and an alternate route, should your primary route be blocked.
You can either write the different routes on your printed family emergency plan, or just talk about it with family members and make sure everyone knows alternate routes.
We have ours posted on our giant whiteboard calendar (affiliate link). It’s kind of like our family’s information station. Just make sure everyone knows where it is, and that it is ALWAYS accessible and ALWAYS visible.
It isn’t a bad idea to stick a copy of it in each car’s glovebox also.
I can’t say that I’ve put a copy in each of the kids’ backpacks because I figure they won’t be released from school without a parent picking them up anyway. But I guess you never know, do you? … Again, wouldn’t be a bad idea…
That’s it! As I mentioned at the beginning, there’s a lot more to a Family Emergency Plan, but we’ve already covered a good amount of it. This is just a one-page summary with personalized important info on the topic.
If you want to continue to cover other parts of your emergency preparedness that your entire family should be a part of and be knowledgeable in, then you might want to check out the Personalized Preparedness membership. It’s kind of like a choose your own adventure, but for preparedness. But don’t worry, you won’t be left to do it all on your own. It’s set up for me to help guide you to your next best step!
There will always be things we don’t think about before we encounter an emergency. But, I’m here to help you think about some of the non-food storage items you might want to keep on hand for the next rainy day.
Why you should schedule an emergency preparedness weekend every 6 months, and what you should be doing, reviewing, rotating, and maintaining. Free printable checklist!
Berkey water filters are THE BEST water filters, not only for emergencies, but for everyday use. They are so good, they are classified as a water purifier, which is a step up from a filter!
