How to Create a Family Disaster Plan

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• What would you do if a disaster happened while you were away at work?
• Do you have a designated location to meet up with your family after a disaster?
• Who would you try to contact after a disaster?

These are just a few of the WHAT IF… questions you need to answer in your family disaster plan.

Disasters come in many varieties — floods, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, wildfires, power outages, terrorist attacks, radiation threats, and more. They can happen at any time with little or no notice. Depending on the disaster, you may need to evacuate your home… or be confined to it. You might even face service disruptions to your water, power, gas, or telephone. A family disaster plan helps you prepare for all these situations.

It’s not fun to think about what could happen in a disaster, but creating a family disaster plan is an important exercise to prepare your family! Knowing what to do is your best protection.

Your family disaster plan should be one of the first documents in your grab-and-go binder. It communicates all sorts of information, such as your designated meeting locations, your preferred escape routes, your out-of-state emergency contacts info, and more.

Identify What Type of Disasters Are Most Likely to Happen in Your Area

A simple family disaster plan is the key to success. Sit down with your family and discuss what you would do in several disaster situations. Write down all of your plans and review them with your family often.

Focus on discussing the most probable disasters to affect your area. For example, the eastern states are prone to hurricanes while the western states see more high-magnitude earthquakes and the states in between get tornados. Your local area might also have specific risks to floods or civil unrest.

Information to Include in Your Family Disaster Plan

Your family disaster plan should answer all the WHAT IF… questions. Where will you go? What will you do? How will you do it? etc.

We’re currently creating some printable worksheets to help you get your family disaster plan put together. It is part of our emergency grab-and-go binder printable. If you want to be notified when they’re finished, subscribe below. We’ll also send you other useful emergency preparedness information.

You can also check out the American Red Cross Family Disaster Plan Template to help you get started.

Here is a more detailed list of information to include in your family disaster plan:

• Pick two meeting locations — one inside your community and one outside.
• Choose a designated family member or friend who lives far away for everyone to call and report their status. This is important because local calls often become impossible after a disaster.
• Be familiar with preferred escape routes and possible road blockages. Consider including a local map in your family disaster plans, too.
• Discuss how to handle pets in an emergency. Most emergency shelters won’t be able to accommodate them.
• Create special plans on how to help elderly or disabled family members.
• Assign responsibilities to family members, such as who will lock the house and who will grab the emergency kits.
• If you have two-way radios in your 72-hour kit, choose a few stations to use and designate a time during the day to try and connect if you get separated from your family.

After you’ve created your family disaster plan, be sure to practice! A good time to do this is when you are revising your 72-hour kit every six months. Your family disaster plan won’t be useful if it is not something your family regularly reviews and modifies.