Tips to make leaving your home due to a disaster less disastrous.
When a disaster strikes you’re going to have a lot on your mind, and most of the thoughts that go through your head are going to be variations of “What do I do now?” Making a plan for leaving your home during an emergency isn’t entirely different than making a plan to go on vacation. Clearly being forced from your home won’t be a vacation, but if you’re honest with yourself the best case scenario is to make it as close to a vacation as possible.
I’m going to use the Five Ws (Who, What, When, Where and Why) to explain my approach to creating a bug out plan. Those are pretty useful questions to ask in many situations, but let’s see how they apply to bugging out.
I’ll do my best to quickly run through the Five Ws, and then try and apply the answers to the steps you should take to create your own emergency plan.
Why Have a Plan?
The reason that you’re making your evacuation plans now is that during an emergency there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll be under a high level of stress, with multiple dangers and distractions that can impair your planning abilities at the time.
If I were to express what the ideal goal during an emergency would be, it would be to have the emergency affect my life as little as possible. That’s the goal that we want to keep in mind as we go through and actually start putting the plan together. The other thing you’ll always want to keep in mind is that you are planning for the worst. For example, the emergencies that are most likely to force people to leave their homes are weather emergencies, so you should be planning on leaving during the worst possible weather.
When Would I Enact the Plan?
Emergencies aren’t typically scheduled in advance, they come with little to no warning. The best warning systems we have in place for natural disasters leave anywhere from a few days warning, to absolutely no warning at all. There’s a quote about preparing for the future “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now,” and that same logic applies to emergency planning.
One of the most time consuming parts of your planning will be packing, and many emergencies aren’t going to allow you time to get everything you want packed up, so it’s generally advised that you create an emergency evacuation bag, or bug out bag, that you can quickly get to in the event of an emergency. Check out this article for some specific recommendations there.
The other consideration that will come up if you’re thinking about the “When” question with regards to emergencies is what time of day / week would you be ready for an emergency.
What would it take for you to be ready if an emergency happens in the middle of the night?
What if the emergency happens when you or your family is at school or work?
Who Is The Plan For?
The most obvious answer is for your household, but let’s be a little more thorough with this answer. One important consideration when making your plan is that everybody you are planning for should also be aware of the plan. Remember that you may not have access to the modern communication conveniences that you’ve become accustomed to. Emergencies are unpredictable, but often come with additional problems besides the emergency itself. Communication networks can be overwhelmed by huge increases in usage, and can also suffer infrastructure damage from weather or vandalism.
Another consideration to remember when creating your plan is that you may want to involve other people, for example most people consider going and staying with a family member or friend as their first option during an emergency, and if that’s your plan you may want to make them aware of this as well, and of course ask if they are ok with it.
What Am I Preparing For?
It’s not really possible to account for every possible thing that might happen, and it might drive you a little crazy if you focus on this too much. It’s recommended that you identify the predominant natural hazards where you live. If you’re not too familiar with your area FEMA has a natural hazards page where you can click through different hazards and they’ll show how likely they are for your area, and a more specific flood plain map where you can see if your house is in danger of flooding.
Those are natural disasters, and there are many other types of disasters that you can be exposed to, such as hazmat emergencies, or even violence from civil disruptions. Those are quite a bit harder to predict, but something people will consider when making their plans.
Where?
The where that we’re really going to be answering here is where are you going to go during an emergency. Planning a place to go can be pretty important, as it not only allows you to find a place more comfortable than sleeping on the ground or in your car, but it also provides rally points where you can meet up with people in the event that communications are down. If you’ve set predetermined locations where you will meet up in the event of an emergency that will increase the likelihood of successfully meeting up with them, as well as keep your spirits up while you are separated, knowing that they have the same plan as you.
As a general rule this is an area where you want to have some redundancy, or multiple locations to go to. It’s also recommended that you have different levels of plans. First and foremost you should have an immediate rally point just outside your home, in case there is an earthquake or house fire and you quickly have to leave. This can be as simple as to meet in the street in front of the house, or to go to a friend’s or neighbor’s house. You’ll want to have a next level plan on top of that for larger emergencies, like floods or wildfires. Typically you’ll want a place to go somewhere further from your home, think 20 miles or so, somewhere that may not be affected by the same emergency causing you to evacuate. If you want to get really serious about this you can pick multiple locations in different directions out of town, in the event that there are road closures or traffic jams. These locations are generally going to be family or friends, and you should communicate with them beforehand to let them know, and make sure they are ok with it. The next step after this would be for larger scale emergencies, which could be wildfires or hurricanes, and know a place, even if it’s just a city, you can go where you can be safe and regroup.
Making Your Plan:
Part of your plan should involve creating an emergency supply kit, or go bag. Check out this article for information on what to consider when creating your own.
Create a list of important information, like phone numbers and addresses of emergency contacts, important medical information, and emergency meeting locations, and print out physical copies for each member of your family / evacuation group. You’ll want something that can be put in a wallet or purse that people are likely to have with them at all times. Don’t rely just on having this information on your phone, but keeping a copy on your phone is also wise. One suggestion when creating a list of emergency contacts is to include somebody from out of state if that’s an option.
Discuss with your family emergency evacuation plans to get out of your house in the event of home fires, or after earthquakes. You should have a rally point where you can meet up and know if everyone is accounted for and safe. Your first priority is going to be to make sure everyone is safe, so having a place you can get to quickly is important.
Discuss secondary rally locations you can meet at if you are separated, like Grandma’s house, or the houses of other family or friends. In most natural disasters this is likely to be where you will end up staying, so ideally you’re picking somewhere close enough that you can still get to quickly, but far enough away that they wouldn’t be affected by the same natural disaster. If you don’t have family and friends as an option you can identify a hotel nearby that you can meet at and stay at, or check with your local authorities to see if there is a shelter you can stay at. The FEMA app will also provide a list of shelters that can be used during an emergency.
Know multiple ways out of town. It’s recommended that you store a physical copy of a local map, even if you know the area fairly well, in your vehicle or your go bag. Emergencies tend to wreak havoc on traffic, blocking roads, causing traffic jams, or just creating unsafe driving conditions. Knowing back roads or alternate routes can get you there quicker or safer than if you only know the main roads that you drive every day. Come up with a prioritized list of locations, as well as backup locations you can go to. If it turns out Grandma’s house to the north is also in the evacuation zone you’ll want to make sure you’ve got an option to the south you can go to, and an option east, and west, even if it’s just to the level of finding the next closest city. You can set a rally point at a hotel, or a Walmart parking lot.
Discuss your evacuation plans with everyone in your family / household. Make sure everyone involved knows what supplies they need to grab as well as where they should go if they need to get out of the house quickly. Things don’t always go according to plan, but having a plan is generally considered better than not. Often times when I think about trying to plan what to do during an emergency it can be frustrating because I know that when the emergency happens there are going to be circumstances that happen that I haven’t thought of, or things that will break all my plans. I think that’s just life. This quote by Dwight Eisenhower sums it up pretty well, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”