How to Make a Family Emergency Plan

A family emergency plan. You’ve heard that you need one time and time again. However, it always seems to get pushed aside for more urgent chores and responsibilities. You keep meaning to get to it, but you just haven’t. Yet.

If this sounds like you, you’re not alone. According to a July 2020 poll by The Nation’s Health, half of Americans are unprepared to face a disaster or another disease outbreak. And, a 2019 poll by Allstate found that 60% of people are not prepared for hurricanes, severe weather, power outages, or other emergencies.

No one likes to think about being in an emergency situation. However, creating a family emergency plan will help ensure that the people you love most get through an emergency safely. When you have a plan, everyone will know what to do to stay safe and reconnect.

The Importance of Creating a Family Emergency Plan

No matter where you live, you’re at risk for some kind of natural disaster. And, that risk keeps increasing each year.

NOAA reports that in the past five years, there have been an astonishing 81 billion-dollar disasters in the United States. There were 22 billion-dollar natural disasters in 2020 alone, a new record. While every state has experienced a billion-dollar disaster since NOAA began tracking them in 1980, Texas has the most.

According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent’s 2020 World Disaster Report, there has been a 35% increase in climate disasters since the 1990s.

A Common Sense Approach to Preparing

A lot of people approach preparing with a fear-based approach. And, this could be why so many people don’t take the time to prepare for emergencies. They just don’t want to think about the worst happening to them or their family.

I get that, I really do. However, I believe that preparing for emergencies is no different than many of the common sense, routine preparations we already do without thinking about it.

The thing is, we do all sorts of things in our everyday life to help protect and insulate ourselves from disasters and emergencies. We have smoke detectors and fire extinguishers in our home. We pay for health insurance, as well as insurance to protect our home and car. We wear seat belts, exercise, and eat healthy to protect our bodies and stay strong. If you have taken steps to build a long-term food pantry, that, too, is a form of insurance. You’re insuring that you can feed your family during a short or long-term emergency.

We don’t do these things out of fear. Instead, it’s the opposite, right? It’s just common sense. Preparing for everyday emergencies and natural disasters is no different.

Preparing does not have to come from a place of fear. Instead, see it for what it is: a form of insurance, a way to protect your family, and an important step towards achieving self-reliance. If the worst happens, you’re prepared to respond intelligently and take care of your family. And the more you prepare, the less fear and anxiety you’ll feel about getting caught off-guard.

How to Make a Family Emergency Plan

Too many people think that a disaster or emergency just won’t happen to them. However, this is a dangerous blindspot to have. After all, your family may not be together when an emergency or disaster occurs. How would you contact your kids if cell towers were down or jammed? How would you all reconnect?

When you have a family emergency plan, you don’t have to worry about these questions. So, let’s get started.

1. Teach Young Children Your Phone Number

Would your kids know how to reach you if they were caught in an emergency without you? Do they know your phone number, or exactly where you work?

If the answer’s “no,” then this is a good place to start. According to pediatrician Wendy Sue Swanson, writing for Parents, children are developmentally old enough to memorize a phone number by age five. All your kids, aged five and older, should know at least one parent or caregiver’s phone number.

Swanson recommends teaching the number through song, to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” or another tune they know well.

2. Know Your Hazards

It doesn’t make sense to prepare for an earthquake when you live in Vermont, or prepare for a blizzard when you live in Louisiana. What does make sense is prepare for the emergencies that are most likely to happen within your community.

So, think about the emergencies that are most likely where you are. Consider these scenarios:

• Home fire
• Tornado
• Hurricane
• Severe storms
• Tsunami
• Earthquake
• Flooding
• Power Outage
• Winter storms (blizzards, ice storms)
• Wildfire
• Landslide
• Civil unrest
• Chemical emergencies

3. Designate an Out-of-Town Contact

After a disaster, it’s often easier to make a long-distance call than a local call. This is why you need to designate an out-of-town family member or friend to be your family’s contact person.

Make sure everyone in your family knows, if they can’t reach you, to call your emergency contact person during an emergency to check in.

Next, let this person know that they’re the official in-case-of-emergency (ICE) contact person for your family. And, make sure their contact information is put into each family member’s cell phone. You might want to put “ICE” in front or behind their name, so anyone

4. Create an Emergency Group Text List

Next, create a group text list on your phone of each person you’d need to contact immediately during an emergency.

Remember, cell towers are often overloaded during an emergency. Texts will often work when voice calls won’t. Creating this group text in advance will save time if you ever have to use it.

You and your family can also discuss using social media channels like Facebook or Twitter to reconnect during a disaster. If you go this route, make sure everyone knows which channel to use first.

5. Choose a Meet-Up Location

An important part of your family emergency plan is figuring out where your family could meet up if going home wasn’t an option. You need to have two meetup locations.

Your first location should be somewhere in your neighborhood, like a neighbor’s house or a subdivision entrance sign. Your family should go here first if home isn’t an option. You also need a meetup location that’s not in your neighborhood. This could be a library, community center, place of worship, a friend’s house, or a park.

Once you’ve chosen these locations, talk them over with your family. Make sure they know where they are, and how to get there from places they commonly spend time in, like school or a best friend’s house.

6. Learn School Emergency Plans

Do you know how your child’s school will communicate with families during a crisis? Do they keep food and water stored for everyone if they have to shelter-in-place? Where would they will take your children if the school had to be evacuated? What would happen if you were unable to pick up your children during an emergency…do you have an authorized secondary pick-up person who’s allowed to collect your kids?

Make sure you know the answer to these questions before the week is out.

You also need to think about scenarios that might affect children who are attending school elsewhere, such as college or boarding school. What emergency situations are more likely where they are? How could they get home during an emergency?

7. Download Family Emergency Plan Templates

Each person in your family should carry a copy of your family emergency plan in their wallet, purse, or backpack. To save time and make it easy, check out these pre-printed, downloadable family emergency plan templates.

Marines. This downloadable family emergency plan template created by the U.S. Marine Corps. has boxes for each family member’s personal information, as well as out-of-town contacts and important insurance policy information and medical records.

FEMA. This family emergency plan created by FEMA helps you identify a neighborhood meeting place, as well as meeting places out of your neighborhood and out of town. There are also wallet cards that you can fill out with your family’s out-of-town contact information as well as your meeting places.

Red Cross. These wallet cards designed by the Red Cross have spaces for important family contacts, as well as non-911 numbers for police and fire departments, as well as Poison Control.

Note: Having wallet cards with contact information for every person in your family is extremely important in case someone doesn’t have their mobile phone on them during an emergency, it’s broken, or the battery dies. With these cards, your family member could borrow someone else’s phone and call your ICE to let them know they’re safe.

8. Download a WiFi Calling App

During an natural disaster it’s common for cell towers to go down or become overloaded. This is why it’s important to find and download a WiFi calling app, which enables you to make calls using WiFi. During an emergency, WiFi is often more reliable than cell service, at least while the power is still on.

If you have an Android phone, try using Google Voice. For iOS, use Facetime or Talkatone.

9. Copy Important Documents

If your family has to evacuate suddenly, you probably won’t have time to gather important documents like birth certificates or Social Security cards.

One way to ensure that you’ll always have access to these documents is to scan them, put them on a jump drive, and leave it with an trusted out-of-town family member who has a safe. You can also put your copies in a safety-deposit box.

You should make copies of the following documents:

• Birth certificates
• Social Security cards
• Passports
• Marriage certificates
• Death certificates
• Wills and trusts
• Credit card numbers
• Insurance policies (life, home, car, health)
• Citizenship papers
• Military papers
• Real estate deeds
• Titles (car, home, boat)
• Important medical records
• Adoption or custody decrees
• Financial information (bank account numbers, investment portfolio)
• Family genealogy information

Last Word

It can be unnerving to think about your family getting separated during a disaster. However, if you take time now to create a family emergency plan, you won’t have to worry about what might happen if you’re caught in an emergency. Everyone will know what to do to communicate and hopefully reconnect.

Although it’s impossible to predict every scenario, taking basic steps to prepare for the most common emergencies can give you and your family some peace of mind. And remember, taking steps to prepare for an emergency doesn’t have to come from a place of fear. It’s truly not that much different then shopping for home insurance or changing the batteries in your smoke detector. You’re taking one more step to keep your family safe, and be a little more self-reliant at the same time.