Family and Community Organizing

A plan works best when it is shared. Your household may not be together when a disaster strikes. Know how you will contact one another, how you will reconnect if separated, and where you will meet.⁠^[1]

Ready.gov's four steps:⁠^[1]

1. Meet with your household and answer the basic questions: how you will get alerts, where you will shelter, your evacuation route, and your communication plan.
2. Assess your needs: different ages, medical needs and equipment, disabilities, languages, dietary needs, pets, and school-aged children. Discuss how people in your network can help each other with communication, child care, pets, and other needs.
3. Write the plan down. Ready.gov has a fillable family emergency plan form.
4. Practice it.

Give each person a job. When several households plan together, name one person for each role, with a backup. General guidance: adjust the roles to fit your group.

• Coordinator: keeps the plan and contact list current and makes the call to activate it.
• Medical lead: keeps the medication lists and first-aid supplies, and takes first-aid and CPR training. See the Medicine guide.
• Food and water lead: tracks stored food and water and rotates it. See the Food and Water guides.
• Communications lead: keeps radios charged and runs the check-in schedule. See the Communications guide.
• Check-in lead: makes sure everyone who needs extra help has a buddy (next section).
• Money lead: keeps the shared fund's records, if you have one. See the Money guide.

Older adults and people with disabilities should not face an emergency alone. Ready.gov advises building a support network of family, friends, neighbors, and others who can help, and practicing your plan with them.⁠^[15]

Give each person who needs extra help a named buddy and a backup. The buddy checks in during every emergency, and daily during long outages or extreme heat or cold. General guidance.

What a support network should do, according to Ready.gov:

• At least one person has a key to the home, knows where the emergency supplies are, and knows how to use lifesaving equipment or give medicine.⁠^[15]
• Keep a contact list in a watertight container in the emergency kit or on your devices.⁠^[16]
• Plan accessible transportation for evacuation ahead of time.⁠^[16]
• If someone gets routine treatments at a clinic or hospital, find out the clinic's emergency plan and identify backup providers.⁠^[15]
• In extreme heat, the support network should check in regularly.⁠^[16]

Registries and priority power: many city and county emergency management agencies keep voluntary registries for people with disabilities to get targeted help in emergencies. If someone uses medical equipment that needs electricity, ask the power company about its priority restoration list.⁠^[16]

Benefits: a disaster can disrupt mail for days or weeks. Anyone who relies on Social Security or other regular benefits can switch to direct deposit or a Direct Express card.⁠^[15]

A hub household is the home where people gather in a long outage. General guidance for choosing one:

• Independent heat or cooling, such as a generator with a proper inlet, a wood stove, or solar and batteries. See the Power guide.
• Space to sleep extra people, and a well-stocked pantry and water supply.
• Few stairs, so people with limited mobility can use it.
• Everyone knows the address and how to get there by more than one route.

Pick a backup hub too, in case the first one is damaged or in the evacuation area. General guidance.

A shared mutual-aid fund lets households help each other without scrambling in a crisis. General guidance: this is a common practice, not legal or financial advice.

• Write the rules down before anyone needs the money. Who contributes and how much (voluntary amounts are fine), who can approve spending, what it can be used for, and the most any one request can get.
• Keep records. One person keeps the books; a second checks them.
• Decide in advance whether help is a gift or a loan, so no one is surprised later.
• Keep part of it in cash, since cards and ATMs may not work in an outage. See the Money guide.

Share with your neighbors, too. Hawaii's emergency agency suggests forming a neighborhood communication group online or at a community center.⁠^[13]

On any weekday, an estimated 69 million U.S. children are in school or child care, away from their parents. Emergencies raise the chance that children and parents get separated. The faster children are reunited with people they know, the better they do.⁠^[23]

• Know the school's plan. Schools and child care centers have emergency plans to reunite children with families. Learn them, and learn which safety drills the school runs.⁠^[23]
• Make emergency contact cards for children to carry in their school bag or backpack.⁠^[23]
• Help older children memorize important names and phone numbers.⁠^[23]
• Choose more than one meeting place, and put phone numbers and emergency contacts in the family plan.⁠^[23]
• Include children in making the emergency plan.⁠^[23]
• Name who may pick up each child if a parent can't get there, and tell the school in writing. General guidance: schools have their own release rules.

If you are separated, the American Red Cross's Reconnecting Families service and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (1-800-THE-LOST) can help.⁠^[23]

A plan you have never practiced has gaps you have not found. Ready.gov's last step is to practice your plan with your household.⁠^[1]

Try a practice outage weekend once or twice a year. General guidance, not an official program:

1. Pick a weekend. Tell everyone, including neighbors who might worry.
2. Turn off the main breaker, or just agree not to use grid power. Keep the refrigerator and freezer closed.
3. Live from your stored water and food. Cook only with safe, outdoor-rated equipment used outdoors.
4. Run your check-in schedule by phone or radio, as if the power were really out.
5. Write down every problem you find, and fix one each month.

Set a stop rule before you start. If anyone gets too hot or too cold, or someone's medical equipment needs power, end the drill. General guidance.

Keep generators outdoors, more than 20 feet from windows, doors, and vents.⁠^[24]

Neighbors are the first responders. After a disaster, fire and medical services may not be able to meet demand, and people may have to rely on each other for immediate life-saving help.⁠^[27]

CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) trains volunteers in basic disaster response skills: fire safety, light search and rescue, team organization, and disaster medical operations. There are more than 3,200 local CERT programs, and more than 600,000 people have trained since CERT became a national program.⁠^[28]

• Start online for free: FEMA's Emergency Management Institute course IS-317, Introduction to CERT, is free and open to anyone.⁠^[28]
• Teen, campus, and workplace CERT programs also exist.⁠^[28]
• Find a local program through your city or county emergency management office. General guidance.

Neighborhood groups: get to know your neighbors and let them know how you can help in an emergency. Share information with the people around you.⁠^[13] A simple list of who has medical training, a generator, or tools, and who may need help, makes a block much safer. General guidance.

Learn CPR and first aid. Bystanders are often first on the scene in a medical emergency.⁠^[29] See the Medicine guide.