Chapter 31 — Emergency Preparedness

🆘 WHAT TO DO RIGHT NOW

If there's a fire: get out. Don't gather belongings, don't investigate. Close doors behind you — a closed door buys minutes. Stay low under smoke. Once out, stay out. Call 911 from outside.

If your carbon monoxide alarm sounds: everyone outside immediately, then call 911. Do not investigate. CO is odorless and this is not a nuisance alarm.

If someone is unresponsive and not breathing normally: call 911, put it on speaker, and start hands-only CPR — push hard and fast in the center of the chest, about 100–120 compressions per minute, at least 2 inches deep. The dispatcher will coach you. You cannot make it worse; without CPR they will die.

If someone is bleeding severely: firm direct pressure with anything, and don't let up to check. If it won't stop and it's a limb, a tourniquet high and tight above the wound is appropriate — pain is expected.

If you have to evacuate in five minutes: people, pets, medications, phone and charger, wallet and ID, and your document folder. Everything else is replaceable.

The realistic version of preparedness

Preparedness has a public image problem. It conjures bunkers and a year of freeze-dried food, which makes ordinary people conclude it's not for them.

The actual math is different. The emergencies that happen to ordinary people are: a power outage for two days, a water main break, a hurricane evacuation, a wildfire evacuation, a job loss, a car breakdown at night, a house fire, a burst pipe, a medical emergency, and a stretch of weather that makes the roads impassable.

Almost all of these are handled by: three days of water and food, a working flashlight, a charged phone, copies of your documents, a full gas tank, some cash, and having thought about it once in advance.

That's a Saturday afternoon and about $150. It's not survivalism; it's the same category of thing as having a spare tire.

And the highest-value preparation is not equipment. It's: working smoke alarms, a plan your household has actually discussed, knowing where the shutoffs are, and having your documents accessible. Those are free.

What this chapter is not assuming about you

Most preparedness advice was written for somebody with a house, a garage, a car, and a shelf in the basement. It says things like "keep two weeks of water in the crawlspace" and "top off the generator." If you live in a 400-square-foot studio, share a kitchen, don't drive, and have maybe $40 of slack in a good month, that advice reads as a description of somebody else's life, and the natural reaction is to close the tab.

So here's the version that starts where you actually are.

You do not need a car. Not having one changes the evacuation section and nothing else. It means you plan your exit differently, and you plan it earlier.

You do not need storage space. Three days of water for one person is three gallons — under a cubic foot, and it goes under the bed or in the back of a closet.

You do not need $150 at once. The kit is buildable one $4 item per grocery trip, and the version that costs nothing still covers most of the actual risk.

And the single most protective thing in this chapter is free: a working smoke alarm and a household that has said out loud, once, "if something happens, we meet at the corner and we call Aunt Rosa in Ohio." That's the whole plan. It takes ten minutes and it outperforms every piece of gear on the market.

If you only do the free things, you are meaningfully prepared. Not optimally. Meaningfully. That's the standard here.

Start here: the kit in four stages

The problem with emergency kit lists is that they arrive as one intimidating block — forty items, $200, a Saturday — and so most people do none of it. Nothing about a kit requires finishing it. Each stage below is independently useful, and stopping at any of them leaves you better off than the day before.

Stage 0 — $0, one evening

Nothing on this list costs money.

• Test every smoke alarm. If there isn't one, call your fire department's non-emergency line — most departments install them free, and many bring a CO alarm too. If you rent, most states require the landlord to provide working alarms; ask in writing (Chapter 12).
• Fill containers with tap water. Clean 2-liter soda bottles. Fill, cap, date them, stash them.
• Write down phone numbers on paper. One copy in your wallet, one in your bag.
• Photograph your documents and put the copies where a dead phone can't take them from you (Chapter 30).
• Sign up for your county's alert system. Search "[your county] emergency alerts."
• Find your shutoffs — water, gas, breaker panel — and photograph each one.
• Say the plan out loud to whoever lives with you. Where you meet. Who to call.

That's most of the benefit, and it cost nothing.

Stage 1 — about $25

• An LED flashlight and batteries — $8. (Your phone is a flashlight, but it's also your only line out. Don't drain it.)
• A manual can opener — $4. The single most forgotten item in every emergency kit ever assembled.
• A few days of food you already eat that needs no cooking — $10 or so, bought one item at a time.
• $20 in fives and ones, somewhere you won't spend it.

Stage 2 — about $75 more

• A power bank, 10,000mAh or larger, plus the right cable. This is the highest-value $25 in the chapter for anyone whose phone is their bank, their ID, and their map.
• A basic first aid kit, or the components bought separately, which is cheaper.
• A hand-crank or battery radio with NOAA weather bands.
• A case of bottled water to sit alongside your refilled bottles.
• N95 masks — a handful. Smoke, dust, demolition, and they're the only mask that does anything for wildfire smoke.

Stage 3 — about $200 more, over a season

• A fire extinguisher for the kitchen, ABC rated.
• A battery-powered CO alarm if you have any gas appliance, a fireplace, or an attached garage — and if you don't already have one, this moves up to Stage 0, because it's the thing that quietly kills people after storms.
• Two weeks of shelf-stable food instead of three days.
• A larger power bank and a headlamp.
• The go-bag, assembled and by the door.

Nobody has to reach Stage 3. Most households in the country are somewhere around Stage 1, and Stage 1 handles a two-day power outage without much drama.

Know your actual risks

Preparing for the wrong disaster is wasted effort. Find out what's likely where you live.

Look up: - FEMA's National Risk Index (hazards.fema.gov/nri) — hazard risk by county - FEMA flood maps (msc.fema.gov/portal) — by address - Your state and county emergency management website — they publish local hazard assessments - Your local news archives — what has actually happened here?

By hazard

Hurricanes

(Atlantic and Gulf coasts, June–November.) Days of warning. Know your evacuation zone and route. The wind is not usually what kills people — storm surge and inland flooding are.

The category number is a wind scale and nothing else. A Category 1 with a slow track and a bad surge forecast is far more dangerous than a fast-moving Category 3 that's over you in six hours. Read the surge and rainfall forecast, not the category.

Evacuation zones are about water, not distance from the beach. Coastal counties assign zones (A/B/C or 1/2/3) based on how far surge is modeled to reach. Look yours up now, not during a warning — search "[your county] evacuation zone." If your zone is called, that's the whole decision. The old line is "run from water, hide from wind": you evacuate from surge and flooding, and you shelter in place from wind if you're on high enough ground in a sound building.

Know the difference between watch and warning. A watch means conditions are possible, usually 48 hours out — that's your window to leave without traffic. A warning means expected, usually 36 hours out, and by then the roads and the shelves are ugly.

Tornadoes

(Midwest, South, but possible almost anywhere.) Minutes of warning. You need a safe room: basement, or an interior room on the lowest floor with no windows. Get a NOAA weather radio — it wakes you up.

Put as many walls between you and outside as possible. A basement, a storm cellar, an interior bathroom, a closet under the stairs. Cover yourself with a mattress or heavy blankets. Wear a helmet if you have one — a bike helmet counts, and head injury is a leading cause of tornado deaths.

Mobile and manufactured homes are not survivable in a strong tornado, regardless of tie-downs. Your plan is to leave before it arrives — know the nearest community shelter or sturdy building and go at the watch, not the warning.

In an apartment building: lowest floor you can reach, interior hallway, away from windows, never the elevator. If a ground-floor neighbor is willing, ask now whether you can come down — that conversation is easier before the sirens.

Don't shelter under a highway overpass. It's an old myth; overpasses accelerate wind. A ditch or low ground is genuinely safer.

Earthquakes

(West Coast, Alaska, and more places than people think — including the New Madrid zone in the central US.) No warning. Drop, Cover, Hold On. Secure heavy furniture and water heaters. Know that gas leaks and fires follow.

Drop to your hands and knees, get under a sturdy table if there is one, and hold on. No table: next to an interior wall, head and neck covered. Do not run outside — most injuries come from falling debris and from people moving during shaking. Do not stand in a doorway; that advice is decades out of date.

Cheap prevention that works: anchor the bookcase and dresser with $10 of straps, put nothing heavy on a shelf above where you sleep, strap the water heater. Renters can do all of it with removable adhesive anchors.

After the shaking: expect aftershocks, check for gas smell, put on shoes before you walk anywhere (broken glass is the classic injury), and no candles until you know there's no leak.

Earthquake early warning exists on the West Coast — ShakeAlert feeds phone alerts and the free MyShake app. It gives seconds, which is enough to get under a table.

Wildfires and smoke

(West, and increasingly elsewhere.) Defensible space around structures, an evacuation plan, and a go-bag. Wildfire smoke affects people hundreds of miles away — a good air filter matters even far from the fire.

Wildfire is the hazard with the least reliable warning. A fire can go from a column on the horizon to an evacuation order in under an hour. Many western counties use a three-stage system — Ready / Set / Go, or Level 1 / 2 / 3. "Set" means the car is loaded and you are dressed. If you're waiting for "Go" to start packing, you've already made the wrong call.

Smoke is the part that reaches everyone. Check the air quality index at airnow.gov. Above roughly 150 AQI, sensitive people should be indoors; above 200, everyone should. Close windows, run AC on recirculate, and skip the vacuum, the candles, and the gas stove — they all add particulates.

The cheap air cleaner that actually works: a 20-inch box fan with a 20x20 MERV-13 furnace filter taped to the intake side — roughly $35, and it measurably drops indoor particulates. Four filters in a cube (the Corsi-Rosenthal design) works better for about $70. One of the few pieces of real preparedness gear you can build for less than the price of buying it.

N95 or KN95 for smoke. Cloth and surgical masks do essentially nothing for smoke particles.

Floods

(Everywhere — flooding is the most common US natural disaster.) Six inches of moving water knocks an adult down; twelve inches floats most cars. Turn Around, Don't Drown is not a slogan, it's the leading cause of flood deaths. Flood damage is not covered by homeowners or renters insurance (Chapter 8).

More than half of flood drownings in the US happen in vehicles. People drive into water because it looks shallow, because they've driven that road a thousand times, because it's only a hundred feet. The road underneath may not be there anymore — moving water scours pavement out from under itself, and you can't see that. Two feet of moving water carries away most vehicles, including trucks and SUVs. There is no version of this where you're the exception.

If your car stalls in rising water: get out and get to higher ground immediately, while you still can. Doors become impossible to open under a foot or two of water pressure; go out a window.

Flash flood warnings mean now. Go up — a higher floor, higher ground — and don't wait for the water to reach you before deciding.

Flood insurance is separate, usually through the National Flood Insurance Program (floodsmart.gov), and there's typically a 30-day waiting period before a new policy takes effect. Buying it when the storm is named doesn't work. Renters can buy contents-only flood coverage, which is much cheaper than the building policies and is the version most people in this book need.

Winter storms

Power outages, heating loss, impassable roads. The specific killer is carbon monoxide from improvised heating.

Pipes freeze and burst — that's the expensive part. When a hard freeze is forecast: let a faucet drip on exterior walls, open the cabinet doors under the sinks so warm air reaches the pipes, and disconnect outside hoses. Know where your water shutoff is before a pipe bursts, because you will have a very small window of clear thinking (Chapter 12).

If the heat fails: close off every room you're not in, hang blankets over windows and in doorways, and live in one room. Sleeping bags, layers, hats indoors. The body heat of two people in one small closed room is a real amount of heat.

If you must travel: somebody knows your route and ETA, the tank is above half, and there's a blanket in the car (Chapter 27). If you get stranded, stay with the vehicle. Run the engine about ten minutes an hour for heat and clear the exhaust pipe of snow first, or you're pumping CO into the cabin.

Extreme heat

Kills more Americans than any other weather event, and disproportionately affects older people, people without AC, and outdoor workers. Know where your local cooling centers are.

Heat doesn't look like a disaster, which is exactly why it kills so many people — there's no dramatic footage, so nobody treats it as an emergency. Most heat deaths happen indoors, to people who had no air conditioning or couldn't afford to run it.

Find your cooling center before you need it. Call 211 or check your city's website. Libraries, community centers, senior centers, and malls all work. Going somewhere cool for even a few hours in the afternoon meaningfully reduces risk — it doesn't have to be all day.

A fan alone stops helping above about 95°F and can make things worse by blowing hot air at you. Cool showers, wet cloths on the neck and wrists, and the lowest floor of the building do more.

Check on the people who won't ask. Elderly neighbors, anyone on medication that affects heat tolerance — many blood pressure, psychiatric, and allergy medications do — and anyone living alone.

Power outages

The most common emergency by far, and the one this chapter's whole kit is really built for. Full treatment below.

The emergency kit

Build it once. Check it twice a year.

Water — the most important item

One gallon per person per day, minimum three days. More in heat, more if you can store it.

• Store-bought bottled water is easiest. Rotate annually.
• Or fill clean containers — food-grade plastic, replaced every six months.
• A family of four for three days needs 12 gallons. That's two cases of bottled water and a couple of jugs.
• Don't forget pets.

Where the gallon-a-day number comes from: roughly half is drinking and half is everything else — brushing teeth, washing hands, taking a pill, cleaning a wound, making the coffee that keeps you civil. In real heat, or if anyone is pregnant, nursing, sick, or working outside, plan on more. Nobody has ever regretted having too much water.

Storing it in a small apartment. Three gallons per person for three days is about a cubic foot and 25 pounds. It fits under a bed, behind the couch, or on the floor of a closet. Split it between two spots if you can.

• Store-bought bottled water in the sealed case is easiest. Rotate about once a year, and keep it off concrete and away from gasoline or solvents — plastic breathes and picks up odors.
• Refilling your own is free. Use clean 2-liter soda bottles. Do not reuse milk or juice jugs — the sugars and proteins never fully rinse out and they grow things. Wash, fill from the tap, cap tight, date it in marker.
• Replace tap-filled containers about every six months. Fold it into the twice-yearly alarm check so it's one task, not two.
• If a big storm is forecast, fill everything — the bathtub, pots, the washing machine. Municipal water often survives the storm and fails in the aftermath, when the treatment plant loses power. Bathtub water is for flushing and washing, not drinking, unless you treat it.

If you run out: your water heater holds 30–50 gallons (turn off power/gas first, drain from the bottom valve). Toilet tanks (not bowls) hold clean water. Ice in the freezer.

Melted ice, the water in canned vegetables, and the last of the pitcher in the fridge are all real water. Never drink from a waterbed, a pool, a hot tub, or a radiator.

Purification: boil for one minute at a rolling boil (three minutes above 6,500 feet). Or unscented household bleach — 8 drops per gallon, wait 30 minutes. Or a filter rated for the purpose.

Doing the bleach method correctly, because people get this wrong in both directions:

1. Filter it first if it's cloudy — a coffee filter, a clean t-shirt, or let it settle and pour off the top. Disinfectant works poorly through sediment.
2. Plain unscented household bleach only. Not scented, not "splash-less," not color-safe. Check the label for sodium hypochlorite.
3. About 8 drops (⅛ teaspoon) per gallon for standard 6% bleach; about 6 drops for the 8.25% concentrate most stores now sell. Double it for cloudy or very cold water.
4. Stir and wait 30 minutes. It should smell faintly of chlorine. If not, repeat once and wait another 15. If it still doesn't, throw it out.
5. Bleach loses strength on the shelf — a bottle over a year old may not work. Buy a small one.

Boiling is more reliable than bleach. But neither removes chemical contamination, lead, or fuel — if the contamination is chemical, boiling makes it worse by concentrating it. Follow what your utility actually says.

A "boil water advisory" applies to brushing your teeth, washing produce, and making ice, not just drinking.

Food

Three days minimum, two weeks better. No cooking required, no refrigeration.

• Canned goods (and a manual can opener — the number one forgotten item)
• Peanut butter, nuts, dried fruit
• Granola and protein bars
• Crackers
• Shelf-stable milk
• Instant coffee or tea
• Comfort food — genuinely matters for morale, especially with children
• Baby formula and food, if applicable
• Pet food
• Anything with dietary restrictions in your household

The rule that makes food storage work: store what you already eat. Not survival rations. Not a bucket of freeze-dried stroganoff. Canned beans, tuna, soup, peanut butter, the granola bars you buy anyway. Emergency food you'd never choose is emergency food you'll never rotate, which means it quietly expires and you've spent money on nothing.

Buy pull-tab cans where you can — no heat, no water, no fridge, no can opener. Canned fruit and vegetables come with a bonus: the liquid counts as water.

Rotate. Use and replace, or you'll discover it expired in 2021.

The rotation system that actually holds: put the emergency food at the front of the cabinet, not in a special box in a closet. Eat from it normally and replace what you eat on the next grocery trip. The kit is your pantry, one layer deeper. No dating system, no spreadsheet, no annual audit of cans.

Dates on shelf-stable food are quality dates, not safety dates. "Best by" is a guess about peak flavor; canned food kept cool and undented is generally fine well past it. What you actually throw out: bulging, leaking, rusted-through, or badly dented cans, and anything that hisses or smells wrong. Botulism is rare, but it isn't worth gambling on for a $1.29 can of green beans.

Feeding people, not just calories. Instant coffee, candy, something a kid actually likes — not luxuries. Three days without power is boring and frightening, and food is most of what there is to do. If someone has celiac, a nut allergy, diabetes, or eats halal or kosher, the kit has to match, or in the worst moment you'll have a shelf of food nobody can eat.

Light and power

• Flashlights — one per person. LED, and check the batteries.
• A headlamp is better than a flashlight for anything requiring both hands.
• Extra batteries
• A battery or hand-crank radio, ideally NOAA weather-capable
• Power banks, charged. A 20,000mAh bank charges a phone about four times.
• A car charger
• Candles are a fire risk and a leading cause of post-disaster house fires. Use LED lanterns.

First aid

• Adhesive bandages, gauze, tape
• Antiseptic wipes, antibiotic ointment
• Tourniquet and hemostatic gauze if you're willing to learn to use them
• Instant cold packs
• Tweezers, scissors, safety pins
• Disposable gloves
• Thermometer
• Pain relievers, antihistamines, anti-diarrheal, antacid
• A week or more of every prescription medication — the hardest item to stock and the most important. Ask your doctor about an emergency supply; many insurers allow a vacation override for an early refill.
• Prescription glasses (an old pair)
• Epinephrine auto-injector if anyone has severe allergies
• Naloxone (Narcan) — over the counter, and worth having

Tools and supplies

• Multi-tool or knife
• Duct tape
• Work gloves
• N95 masks — dust, smoke, and debris
• Whistle (far more effective than shouting for signaling, and uses far less energy)
• Plastic sheeting
• Garbage bags — waste, waterproofing, improvised rain gear
• Wrench or pliers to shut off gas and water
• Fire extinguisher — ABC rated, one per floor, and one in the kitchen
• Manual can opener
• Local paper maps — phones fail

Sanitation

• Toilet paper, wet wipes
• Hand sanitizer
• Soap
• Heavy garbage bags and ties — if water is out, a lined bucket is your toilet
• Feminine hygiene supplies
• Diapers if applicable

Documents and money

• Copies of everything from Chapter 30, in a waterproof container
• Cash in small bills. ATMs and card readers fail when power does. $200–500 is a reasonable target, in fives, tens, and twenties — nobody can make change for a fifty.
• Insurance policy numbers and claim phone numbers
• A written contact list. Your phone will die and you do not know anyone's number.
• Emergency contact cards for children

Comfort

• Blankets or sleeping bags
• A change of clothes and sturdy shoes per person
• Rain gear
• Books, cards, a toy for kids
• A hard copy of important photos

⚠️ THE TRAP: The preparedness industry sells you fear at a markup

Search "emergency kit" and you'll find $200 backpacks, $300 buckets of freeze-dried food advertised as "25-year shelf life," and subscription boxes that mail you a new gadget monthly. The marketing runs on the same engine as every other fear-based sale: it implies that if you don't buy the package, you and your family are unprotected.

What's actually in the $200 backpack: a poncho, a mylar blanket, some water pouches, a whistle, a cheap flashlight, and a first aid kit with twelve bandaids. Maybe $35 of goods. You are paying for the feeling of having handled it.

What actually drives outcomes in the emergencies ordinary people face: a working smoke alarm, water, medication, a charged phone, and having thought about it once. Under $40, most of it free.

Skip: long-term food subscriptions (you won't eat it), "survival" multi-tools that do fourteen things badly, and anything whose ad copy contains the phrase "when the grid goes down."

Buy generic and buy separately. Dollar-store bandages are the same bandages, and a $12 hardware-store LED flashlight outperforms the tactical one at four times the price. Nobody in this industry is going to tell you the free version works.

💸 WHEN YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE RIGHT OPTION

A full emergency kit is $150 you may not have. Almost all of the benefit is in a much cheaper subset.

The $25 version, in priority order: 1. A gallon jug of water per person, refilled from the tap and rotated. ~$0. 2. A flashlight and batteries. $8. (Your phone works, but it's also your lifeline — don't drain it.) 3. The written contact list. Free, and it's what you'll need most when your phone dies. 4. Copies of your documents in a ziplock bag. Free. 5. A few days of shelf-stable food you already eat. Buy one extra can a week; in two months you have a kit. 6. $20 in small bills, kept somewhere you won't spend it. 7. A manual can opener. $4, and it's the most-forgotten item in every kit.

What's free and matters more than any of it: - Working smoke alarms. Most fire departments will install them free — call the non-emergency line and ask. Many also provide free CO alarms. - The plan. Meeting places, an out-of-area contact, two ways out of every room. Costs nothing and saves more lives than equipment does. - Practicing the fire escape. Free. - Signing up for local alerts. Free. - Knowing your shutoffs. Free.

Build the kit one item per grocery trip. In two months you're done and you never felt it.

The go-bag

Different from the home kit. This is the one you grab in five minutes.

One backpack per person, by the door or in the closet nearest the exit.

• Water (a liter or two) and a few days of food bars
• Flashlight, batteries
• Charged power bank and a cable
• Medications — at least a week
• Copy of documents, in a waterproof bag
• Cash
• Change of clothes, sturdy shoes, a jacket
• Toiletries and a small first aid kit
• Written contact list
• N95 mask
• Whistle
• Emergency blanket
• For kids: a comfort object, a photo of the family, an ID card with contact info

Check it twice a year and rotate anything expiring. Update it when medications change.

Keep a smaller version in your car, plus a blanket, water, and — in winter — the winter kit from Chapter 27.

The five-minute version and the one-hour version

Two different bags, in practice, even if it's the same bag.

╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║   THE GO-BAG                              Grab order, top to bottom      ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║                                                                          ║
║  ┌── FIVE MINUTES ──────────────────────────────── leave with this ───┐  ║
║  │                                                                    │  ║
║  │  ① PEOPLE       Everyone accounted for. Count out loud.            │  ║
║  │  ② PETS         Carrier, leash, the bag from Chapter 33            │  ║
║  │  ③ MEDS         Pill bottles · inhaler · EpiPen · insulin + cooler │  ║
║  │  ④ PHONE        + cable + charged power bank                       │  ║
║  │  ⑤ WALLET       ID · cards · CASH IN SMALL BILLS                   │  ║
║  │  ⑥ DOC POUCH    The waterproof envelope from Chapter 30            │  ║
║  │                 + the WRITTEN phone list                           │  ║
║  │  ⑦ SHOES        Closed-toe. On your feet, not in the bag.          │  ║
║  │                                                                    │  ║
║  └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘  ║
║                                    │                                     ║
║                                    ▼  if you have longer                 ║
║  ┌── ONE HOUR ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║
║  │                                                                     │ ║
║  │  ⑧ WATER + FOOD BARS      1–2 L per person, 3 days of bars          │ ║
║  │  ⑨ CLOTHES                One change each · jacket · rain gear      │ ║
║  │  ⑩ WARMTH                 Emergency blanket · sleeping bag          │ ║
║  │  ⑪ LIGHT                  Headlamp · flashlight · spare batteries   │ ║
║  │  ⑫ FIRST AID + N95        Small kit · masks · hand sanitizer        │ ║
║  │  ⑬ HYGIENE                Toothbrush · TP · wipes · period supplies │ ║
║  │  ⑭ COMFORT                Kid's toy · photos · phone charger #2     │ ║
║  │  ⑮ IRREPLACEABLE          Photo albums · heirlooms · the hard drive │ ║
║  │                                                                     │ ║
║  └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ║
║                                                                          ║
║  Everything below ⑦ is comfort. Everything above ⑦ is the reason you     ║
║  are not starting over from nothing. If you only get ①–⑦, you won.       ║
║                                                                          ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

① and ② come before objects, every time. The most common evacuation regret is not a lost item, it's a pet left behind because nobody could find the carrier. Keep the carrier where you can reach it without moving furniture (Chapter 33).

③ is the one you cannot replace on the road. A pharmacy in an evacuation zone is closed, and out-of-state pharmacies can't always fill your prescription. Take the actual bottles — the label is what lets a pharmacist anywhere refill it.

④ and ⑤ are your infrastructure. Your phone is your map, your bank, your ID photo, and your only way to say "I'm okay." Cash matters because card readers and ATMs fail with the power — a shelter doesn't charge, but a gas station forty miles inland running on a generator will only take bills.

⑥ is the thing that makes the next six months survivable. Rebuilding without a birth certificate, a lease, an insurance policy number, or a Social Security card is a months-long bureaucratic project stacked on top of everything else (Chapter 30). A single waterproof envelope prevents it.

⑦ sounds trivial and isn't. Post-disaster environments are broken glass, nails, hot metal, and standing water. Flip-flops are how ordinary evacuations turn into ER visits.

⑮ is last for a reason. Grab it if there's time. Do not go back for it. Ever.

Making a plan

The plan matters more than the kit and takes an hour.

Communication

Everyone should know: - An out-of-area contact. During a local disaster, local phone networks are overwhelmed but long-distance often works. Everyone calls one person out of the region who becomes the hub. - Text, don't call. Texts get through congested networks when voice calls don't. This is genuinely important and most people don't know it. - Two meeting places: one right outside the home (for a fire), and one outside the neighborhood (if you can't get home). - Everyone's phone number, written on paper, in a wallet and a backpack.

Why the out-of-area contact works, mechanically. Cell networks aren't sized for everyone calling at once. When a disaster hits, everyone in the affected area picks up their phone in the same ninety seconds and the local towers saturate. But the network is only jammed locally — a call or text routed out of the region often gets through on the first try. So instead of five people trying to reach each other inside the jam, all five reach one person outside it, and she tells each of them where the others are.

Pick somebody a few hundred miles away, ideally in another state. Ask them first — it's a real job. Give them the household list and where each person is likely to be.

Text instead of calling, and know why. A text is a few hundred bytes the network queues and retries in the background until it lands. A voice call demands a dedicated channel for its whole duration and simply fails if none is free. A text sent during the worst of it may take twenty minutes to deliver, and it will usually deliver. Send it once and don't sit there resending.

Write the numbers down on paper. The single most-skipped item in this chapter, and it's free. Almost nobody can recite a phone number anymore, including yours. A dead battery or a cracked screen turns "call your sister" into "you do not know how to reach your sister." A folded index card in your wallet solves it permanently.

Put on the card: household members, the out-of-area contact, your doctor and pharmacy, your insurance company and policy number, your landlord, your employer, your kid's school, and your vet.

A short script for the out-of-area contact, so the call is thirty seconds instead of five minutes:

"It's me. I'm okay. I'm at [location]. My phone is at [battery %]. If you hear from Devon, tell him I'm heading to the Ridgeway shelter and I'll check in again tonight."

Other things that help when networks are bad:

• Wi-Fi calling and messaging apps work over any internet connection — a neighbor's, a shelter's — when cell voice is dead.
• Newer iPhones and some Android phones can text emergency services by satellite with no cell coverage at all. Find out whether yours can, and how, before you need it.
• One social post or a check-in marked "safe" reaches thirty people with a single action while you're standing in line for something.

For each scenario

Fire: two ways out of every room. Where you meet outside. Practice it, including at night. Children in particular need practice — many sleep through smoke alarms, and a drill is what teaches them what to do.

Evacuation: where you'd go (a specific relative, a specific hotel, a shelter), the route and a backup route, what you take, and who's responsible for what — one adult for the kids, one for the pets and the go-bags.

Shelter in place: which room, what supplies are in it.

Separation: what if it happens during work and school? Who picks up whom? Know your children's school emergency and release policy — who they're allowed to release a child to.

Sign up for alerts

• Your county or city emergency alert system — search "[your county] emergency alerts." This is free, takes two minutes, and most people haven't done it.
• FEMA app
• Wireless Emergency Alerts are on by default — make sure you haven't disabled them
• NOAA weather radio for tornado country

The three layers, and why you want more than one:

Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are the federal ones — the loud buzz that interrupts your phone with no app and no signup. They're pushed by cell towers to everyone in a geographic area, so they reach visitors and people who never registered for anything. There are a few categories: national alerts (which can't be turned off), imminent threat alerts like tornado and flash flood warnings, AMBER alerts, and public safety alerts. Check your phone's notification settings and make sure you haven't silenced these — a lot of people turn them off after one 3 a.m. AMBER alert and never turn them back on. They fail when the towers fail, which is exactly the scenario where you need them.

Your county or city system is the one that actually tells you local things — a boil-water notice, a chemical spill on the highway, a neighborhood evacuation, where the cooling center is. These are almost always opt-in, run under names like CodeRED, Everbridge, Nixle, or "[County] Alerts," and they'll usually let you register a phone number, an email, and an address. Register more than one household member so it isn't a single point of failure.

A NOAA weather radio is the layer that doesn't depend on the cell network or the internet at all — it's a direct broadcast from the National Weather Service on its own frequencies, running 24 hours a day. Get one with SAME programming so you can enter your county's code and it only wakes you for your county, and get one with battery backup. This is the thing that wakes you up for a 2 a.m. tornado warning, which is precisely when tornado warnings kill people. $25–40, and in tornado or flash-flood country it's the best money in this chapter.

Know your shutoffs

From Chapter 11 and 12: water main, gas, electrical panel. Photograph them. Keep the right wrench near the gas meter.

When to shut off gas: if you smell gas or the meter is damaged. Only if you can do it safely, and know that only the utility can turn it back on.

Stay or go

This is the decision that most often gets made badly, and almost always in the same direction: people wait too long.

The pattern is predictable. Leaving is expensive, disruptive, embarrassing if nothing happens, and requires admitting the situation is serious. Staying requires no decision at all. So people stay, and then the roads fill and the window closes. The regret is nearly always about not going sooner, almost never about having left for nothing.

╔═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║   SHELTER IN PLACE          vs.          EVACUATE                         ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║                                                                           ║
║  ① TORNADO          ►  STAY. Go DOWN and IN. Never drive from a tornado.  ║
║                        Mobile home? ► LEAVE at the WATCH, not the warning.║
║                                                                           ║
║  ② EARTHQUAKE       ►  STAY during shaking. Drop, cover, hold on.         ║
║                        After: leave only if the building is damaged.      ║
║                                                                           ║
║  ③ WILDFIRE         ►  GO. Early. At "Set," not at "Go."                  ║
║                        There is no shelter-in-place version of this.      ║
║                                                                           ║
║  ④ FLOOD / SURGE    ►  GO, if your zone is called. Water beats walls.     ║
║                        Already surrounded? ► UP, not out. Never drive it. ║
║                                                                           ║
║  ⑤ HURRICANE        ►  Surge zone or mobile home ► GO, 48–72 hrs early.   ║
║                        Inland, sound building ► STAY. Interior room.      ║
║                                                                           ║
║  ⑥ CHEMICAL / SMOKE ►  STAY. Windows shut, HVAC off, interior room,       ║
║                        wet towel at the door. Unless told to go.          ║
║                                                                           ║
║  ⑦ HOUSE FIRE       ►  GO. Immediately. No exceptions, no belongings.     ║
║                                                                           ║
║  ⑧ NO POWER / HEAT  ►  Stay if you can hold above ~60°F / below ~85°F.    ║
║                        Otherwise go somewhere that can — that is not      ║
║                        failure, that is the plan working.                 ║
║                                                                           ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║  OVERRIDE: If an official order says GO, you go. Orders are issued on     ║
║  models you don't have. "It doesn't look bad from here" is not data.      ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

⑥ Chemical release or dense smoke is the one hazard where the building is the protection. Close everything, shut off anything pulling outside air in, go to an interior room with the fewest windows, and put a wet towel along the bottom of the door. Then listen to the radio — that's the only way you'll know when it's over.

⑧ Temperature is the quiet one. Older adults, infants, and anyone with a heart or lung condition lose their margin fast. Leaving a cold apartment for a warming center or a friend's couch is not giving up — it's the correct move, made early.

Going early costs almost nothing

Evacuate 48 hours out and you drive on open roads, find fuel, get a hotel room, sleep. Leave 12 hours out and you sit in six lanes of stopped traffic with a quarter tank while the wind picks up. Same trip. Completely different risk.

Decide your trigger in advance and write it down. "If our zone is under a mandatory order." "If the county goes to Level 2." A pre-committed trigger removes the decision from the moment when you're least able to make it.

Where you go

In rough order of how much you'll like it:

1. Someone you know outside the hazard area. Ask now, while it's hypothetical and easy to say yes to. A standing "if it ever floods, we're coming to you" is worth more than any gear.
2. A hotel outside the zone. Book early — inventory disappears in hours. Many chains waive pet fees during declared evacuations; ask.
3. A public shelter. Free, usually a school gym, run by the county with the Red Cross. Loud, bright, crowded, uncomfortable. Also warm, dry, staffed, and stocked with food, water, power, and someone who knows where the next resource is.

Finding a shelter: text SHELTER plus your ZIP code to 43362, or check redcross.org, the FEMA app, or call 211. Your county emergency management page posts openings during an active event.

What shelters are actually like, since nobody tells you: cots or mats in a gym, shared bathrooms, limited privacy, lights that stay partly on. Bring bedding, medications, a charger, earplugs, and something for kids to do. Shelters generally do not require ID and generally accept everyone — the Red Cross's stated policy is that it serves anyone who needs help and does not ask about immigration status. If that's a live concern, call 211 and ask about a specific site before you go.

Pets: since the federal PETS Act of 2006, state and local emergency plans have had to account for household pets to qualify for certain FEMA funding, and most jurisdictions now run pet-friendly or co-located shelters. Not every shelter takes animals, so find the ones near you before hurricane season, not during it (Chapter 33).

💸 WHEN YOU CAN'T AFFORD THE RIGHT OPTION

Evacuating with no car and no money is a solved problem, but only if you set it up in advance.

Get on the transportation registry. Most counties in hazard-prone areas maintain a list of residents who will need a ride out — variously called a special needs registry, a functional needs registry, or transportation assistance. Call 211 or your county emergency management office and ask how to register. It's free, it takes one phone call, and it is the difference between a bus coming for you and not. Do it now; registration usually closes once an event is active.

Know the pickup points. Counties that run evacuation buses publish designated stops — often schools, libraries, or transit centers. They're on the county emergency management site, in the section nobody reads until it's too late.

Transit runs longer than you'd expect, and then it stops. Buses and trains usually keep operating until conditions get dangerous, then shut down entirely, often 12–24 hours before landfall. Leaving early is not a preference when you don't drive. It's the whole strategy.

The shelter is free. Food, water, cot, bathroom, power, staff. No fee, no ID requirement in most cases, no credit check, no lease. If your honest situation is "I have $12 and no car," the shelter is not the fallback — it is the correct plan, and it exists precisely for this.

211 is the number. Free, 24/7, all fifty states. They know which shelters are open, which take pets, where the cooling and warming centers are, and what emergency assistance funds exist locally. They are the most useful phone number in this chapter and almost nobody calls it.

Ask for the ride. A coworker, a neighbor, the person down the hall. Evacuating with an extra person in the car costs the driver essentially nothing, and most people say yes immediately. The awkwardness of asking is real, and it is much smaller than the alternative.

House fires

Roughly 3,000 people die in US house fires each year, and a large share of those deaths occur in homes with no working smoke alarm.

Prevention

• Smoke alarms in every bedroom, outside each sleeping area, and on every level. Test monthly. Replace batteries annually. Replace the entire alarm every 10 years — the sensors degrade.
• Carbon monoxide alarms on every level, near sleeping areas, if you have any fuel-burning appliance, fireplace, or attached garage.
• Never leave cooking unattended — cooking is the leading cause of home fires.
• Space heaters: three feet of clearance from anything, plugged directly into a wall outlet, never a power strip, and never left running unattended or overnight.
• Don't overload outlets. Replace damaged cords.
• Clean the dryer vent (Chapter 12).
• Candles: never unattended, never near anything flammable, never in a bedroom.
• Smoking: outside, with a real ashtray, and be certain it's out.

The escape plan

• Two ways out of every room. Test that windows open.
• A meeting place outside, in front where firefighters will see you.
• Practice twice a year, including once at night.
• Teach children: get out, don't hide, don't gather things, go to the meeting place.
• Sleep with bedroom doors closed. A closed door dramatically slows fire and smoke — testing has shown temperature differences of hundreds of degrees between a room with an open door and one with a closed door.

During

1. Get out. Immediately. Belongings are replaceable.
2. Stay low. Smoke and heat rise; the survivable air is near the floor.
3. Feel doors with the back of your hand before opening. Hot means find another way.
4. Close doors behind you.
5. If your clothes catch fire: stop, drop, roll.
6. If you're trapped: close the door, seal gaps with cloth, go to a window, signal, and call 911 to tell them exactly where you are.
7. Once out, stay out. More people die going back in than in the original escape.

Fire extinguishers

PASS: - Pull the pin - Aim at the base of the fire, not the flames - Squeeze the handle - Sweep side to side

Only use one if: the fire is small and contained, you have a clear exit behind you, the room isn't filling with smoke, and someone has already called 911. Otherwise get out.

Grease fire: turn off the heat, cover with a lid. Never water — it explodes the burning oil outward. Baking soda works on small ones. Never move a burning pan.

Electrical fire: cut power if you can. Never water. A Class C or ABC extinguisher.

Power outages

This is the emergency you'll actually have. Most people go their whole lives without a hurricane and lose power a dozen times.

The thing that kills people after storms

Carbon monoxide. Not the storm. Not the cold. Carbon monoxide, from a generator, a grill, a camp stove, or a car engine run somewhere it shouldn't be — and it kills in clusters, whole households at a time, in the days after the weather clears and the news trucks have gone.

CO is colorless, odorless, and gives no warning. The early symptoms — headache, nausea, dizziness, confusion — feel like a bad night, so people lie down. Confusion is itself a symptom, which is why victims so often don't get out even when they could.

The rules, and they are absolute:

• Never run a generator indoors, in a garage, in a basement, on a porch, in a shed, or under a carport — including with the door open. "The garage door was open" appears in these reports constantly.
• Generators go at least 20 feet from the house, with the exhaust pointed away, and not near a window, door, or vent — including a neighbor's.
• Never bring a charcoal or gas grill inside, ever, for cooking or for heat.
• Never use a camp stove, propane heater, or gas oven to heat a room.
• Never run a car in an attached garage, even briefly, even with the door up.
• Get a battery-powered CO alarm. A plug-in one does nothing in an outage. This is a $20 item that is the entire defense, because you cannot detect CO yourself.
• If the CO alarm sounds: everyone outside first, then call 911. Don't open windows and hope. Don't investigate.

Newer portable generators sold with a CO shutoff sensor turn themselves off in a dangerous buildup. Buy one of those if you buy one. It is not a substitute for the 20 feet.

Food safety, specifically

• Keep the fridge and freezer closed. A full freezer holds temperature about 48 hours; a fridge about 4 hours. A full freezer holds cold much longer than a half-empty one — fill gaps with jugs of water.
• Food safety: if the fridge was above 40°F for more than 4 hours, discard perishables. When in doubt, throw it out — this is the one place where that advice is correct.
• Unplug electronics to protect from the surge when power returns. Leave one light on so you know when it's back.
• Never run a generator, grill, camp stove, or gas heater indoors, in a garage, or near a window. Carbon monoxide poisoning kills people after every major storm. Generators go at least 20 feet from the house, away from windows and vents.
• Never use a gas oven or stove for heat.
• Warmth: layers, one room, blankets, close off unused rooms, close curtains at night.
• Cooling: lowest floor, wet cloths, minimal activity, and go to a public cooling center if you're at risk. Heat kills quietly.
• If you depend on powered medical equipment: register with your utility (most maintain a medical priority list), have a battery backup plan, and know which nearby facility has power.

The two numbers to hold onto: 4 and 48. An unopened fridge keeps food safe about 4 hours. A full freezer holds about 48 hours; a half-full one, about 24. Every door-opening spends some of that. Put a $5 fridge thermometer inside — then you're reading a number instead of guessing, and guessing is how people either throw out $80 of groceries or eat something that lands them in urgent care.

Once food has actually warmed up: perishables above 40°F for two hours or more go in the trash. Meat, dairy, eggs, leftovers, cut fruit, cooked rice, anything with mayonnaise. You cannot smell or see this, which is why the threshold is a clock and not a judgment call.

Frozen food that still has ice crystals and is at or below 40°F can be refrozen. Texture suffers; safety doesn't. That's most of what's in a freezer after 24 hours.

Hard cheeses, butter, condiments, jam, whole uncut fruit and vegetables, and anything you'd normally leave on the counter are fine. You're not throwing out the ketchup.

Medication that needs refrigeration

This is the outage problem that has an actual deadline. Insulin, some injectables, certain eye drops and biologics.

Do not open the fridge. An unopened refrigerator holds cold for hours and the medication is the reason.

Most unopened insulin tolerates room temperature for around 28 days, though it varies by product — check your label or call the pharmacy, which takes ninety seconds and is worth doing before you need the answer. A pen or vial already in use is usually kept at room temperature anyway.

A cooler with ice packs buys you days, and stores and pharmacies running on generators will often let you keep something in their case — ask. Do not put insulin directly on ice or in the freezer; freezing ruins it permanently.

If you're out and can't get more: many states let a pharmacist dispense an emergency supply during a declared emergency, sometimes without reaching your prescriber. Call and say "I'm in the outage area, I'm out of [drug], what can you do." Chains can often pull your record from any location in the country (Chapter 16).

Keeping the phone alive

Your phone is your map, your bank, your ID, your alert feed, and your only way to tell someone where you are. Treat the battery as a resource you're rationing from hour one, not hour twelve.

• Charge everything the moment an outage looks likely — phones, power banks, laptops, tablets.
• Low Power Mode immediately, brightness down, background refresh off.
• Airplane mode when there's no signal, checked every hour or so. A phone hunting for a dead tower is the fastest way to empty a battery.
• A laptop is a large battery. It'll charge a phone several times over.
• A car charges phones — engine outdoors only, never in a garage.
• Libraries, coffee shops, hospitals, and malls outside the outage area have outlets and generally don't mind. Many cities open charging stations during long outages.

Warming and cooling centers

When your building can't hold a survivable temperature, you leave — and that's the system working, not a personal failure.

Call 211 or check your city's website. During heat waves and cold snaps, cities open libraries, rec centers, senior centers, and schools as warming or cooling centers — free, walk-in, sometimes with transit provided. You don't have to stay the night; six hours in the afternoon is enough to reset.

Basic first aid worth knowing

Take an actual class. Red Cross and American Heart Association courses run $50–110 and take a few hours. Many employers pay for it. It is the single highest-value few hours in this chapter.

Hands-only CPR

If an adult collapses and isn't breathing normally: 1. Call 911. Speaker on. 2. Push hard and fast in the center of the chest. At least 2 inches deep, 100–120 per minute. Stayin' Alive is the right tempo. 3. Don't stop until help arrives or they wake up. 4. Use an AED if one is available. It gives audible instructions. It will not shock someone who doesn't need it.

You do not need certification to help. You cannot make a dead person worse. Good Samaritan laws protect bystanders acting in good faith in every state.

Choking

Adult or child over 1: Ask "are you choking?" If they can cough or speak, encourage coughing. If they can't: - Back blows — five firm blows between the shoulder blades with the heel of your hand - Abdominal thrusts — five, above the navel, inward and upward - Alternate until it clears or they become unresponsive, then start CPR

Infant under 1: face down on your forearm, five back blows; then face up, five chest thrusts with two fingers. No abdominal thrusts on infants.

Severe bleeding

1. Direct pressure, hard, with anything. Don't lift to check.
2. Add more material on top if it soaks through. Don't remove the first layer.
3. Elevate if it's a limb and you can.
4. Tourniquet if it won't stop and it's an arm or leg: high and tight above the wound, tighten until bleeding stops, note the time. It will hurt, and that's expected. A commercial tourniquet is far better than improvised.

Other

Burns: cool running water 10–20 minutes. No ice, no butter. Cover loosely. Go to the ER for burns larger than your palm, on the face, hands, feet, or genitals, or any burn that's white or charred.

Suspected stroke — BE FAST: Balance loss, Eyes/vision change, Face drooping, Arm weakness, Speech difficulty, Time to call 911. Note the time symptoms started — treatment options depend on it.

Heart attack: chest pressure, pain radiating to arm/jaw/back, shortness of breath, nausea, cold sweat. Women more often have atypical symptoms — nausea, fatigue, back or jaw pain — which is why heart attacks in women are more often missed. Call 911. Chew aspirin if not allergic and there's no reason not to.

Allergic reaction / anaphylaxis: epinephrine auto-injector into the outer thigh, then call 911 regardless — symptoms can return. A second dose may be needed.

Seizure: clear the area, cushion the head, do not restrain, do not put anything in their mouth, time it. Call 911 if it lasts over 5 minutes, if there's a second one, if they're injured, if it's their first, or if they don't regain consciousness.

Heat stroke (hot, confused, may have stopped sweating): medical emergency, call 911, cool aggressively with water and ice on the neck, armpits, and groin.

Hypothermia: get them dry and warm gradually, warm the core first, no alcohol, no rubbing.

Poisoning: Poison Control, 1-800-222-1222. Free, 24/7, staffed by experts. Do not induce vomiting unless told to. They resolve a great many calls without a hospital visit.

The paperwork half of medical readiness

Gear is the smaller half. The larger half is a page of information that lets a stranger treat you correctly when you can't explain yourself.

Write a one-page medical sheet for everyone in the household. Paper, in the go-bag and the document pouch, plus a photo of it on your phone:

• Full name, date of birth, blood type if you know it
• Every medication, with the dose and how often — not "my blood pressure pill"
• Allergies, especially drug allergies, and what the reaction is
• Chronic conditions, past surgeries, implanted devices (pacemaker, insulin pump, stent)
• Doctor's name and number, pharmacy, insurance plan and member ID
• Emergency contact and, if you have one, your healthcare proxy (Chapter 30)

Get ahead on prescriptions where you can. Ask your prescriber for a 90-day supply instead of 30 — usually cheaper per pill, and it's automatically an emergency supply. Many insurers will approve a "vacation override" for one early refill; call the number on your card and use that phrase. Then refill at 7 days remaining rather than 2, permanently — that habit alone means you're never a week from empty.

Set your phone's medical ID. iPhone and Android both store conditions, medications, allergies, and an emergency contact readable from the lock screen without a passcode. Four minutes, and paramedics genuinely look for it.

And learn CPR. Full certification runs $50–110, but many fire departments and hospitals teach free hands-only CPR and AED classes. AEDs talk you through it out loud and will not shock someone who doesn't need it. One free afternoon, and it's the highest-value thing in this entire chapter.

If you rent

Renting changes several things in this chapter, and none of the standard advice mentions it.

Your landlord's insurance covers the building, not one thing you own. Not your laptop, not your clothes, not your furniture, and not a hotel room if the place is uninhabitable. A renters policy is usually $10–25 a month and it's the single best-value insurance product most people can buy — and it covers your stuff anywhere, including in a car or a shelter (Chapter 8). It does not cover flood. That's separate, and renters can buy contents-only flood coverage cheaply.

When the upstairs neighbor's tub overflows into your ceiling, three policies are potentially involved: the building's, theirs, and yours. Your renters policy pays you first and then goes after theirs, which is the whole point of it. Photograph everything the same day, report it to the landlord in writing, and open your own claim without waiting to learn whose fault it was (Chapter 12).

Find out what shutoffs you actually control. In a lot of apartments you have fixture shutoffs under the sink and behind the toilet and nothing else — the main is in a locked utility room. Know which situation you're in before there's water coming through the ceiling, and get the after-hours maintenance number into your phone now.

Ask the building three questions, in writing so there's a record: Where do we go for severe weather? What's the fire evacuation plan? Who do I call after hours? Most tenants have never asked, and most buildings will answer.

Alarms are usually the landlord's legal obligation. Most states require working smoke alarms in rentals, and many require CO alarms where there's a fuel-burning appliance or attached garage. If yours doesn't work, request it in writing — that record protects you later, and it's also what gets it fixed in a week (Chapter 10).

Break-ins and personal safety

If you come home and something is wrong — a door open, a broken window, things disturbed: do not go inside. Go somewhere safe and call 911. Burglars are sometimes still there and confrontation is the dangerous scenario.

If someone breaks in while you're home: if you can leave safely, leave. If not, get to a room with a lock, call 911, stay quiet, and stay on the line.

Afterward: don't touch anything until police arrive, photograph everything, make a list of what's missing with serial numbers, file a police report, call your insurer, and change the locks.

Prevention that actually works: solid deadbolts with 3-inch screws into the door frame (most break-ins are simply kicking in a door whose strike plate has short screws), locked windows, exterior lighting, a visible camera or doorbell camera, not announcing travel on social media, and knowing your neighbors — which is consistently among the most protective factors.

🎓 GOING DEEPER: After a disaster

Safety first. Downed power lines (assume live), gas leaks, structural damage, contaminated water, and carbon monoxide from generators.

Document before you clean up. Photograph and video everything for insurance (Chapter 8). Do not throw anything away until the adjuster has seen it, or at minimum until you've documented it thoroughly.

Contact your insurer immediately. Ask about additional living expenses — most policies cover hotels and meals if your home is uninhabitable, and people frequently don't claim it. Keep every receipt.

FEMA assistance: for federally declared disasters, apply at disasterassistance.gov or 1-800-621-3362. There are deadlines.

SBA disaster loans are available to homeowners and renters, not just businesses, at low rates.

⚠️ THE TRAP: Post-disaster contractor fraud

After every disaster, unlicensed contractors arrive in the affected area. The pattern: door-to-door solicitation, pressure to sign immediately, a large cash deposit up front, and then they disappear.

Rules: verify the license with your state board, get multiple written estimates, never pay in full up front (10–30% deposit is normal), get a written contract with a scope and timeline, don't sign anything that assigns your insurance benefits to the contractor without understanding it, and be suspicious of anyone who found you rather than the other way around.

Also watch for fake charity solicitations and FEMA impersonators — FEMA never charges a fee.

Take care of the mental health part. Disaster response includes a well-documented delayed emotional impact. The SAMHSA Disaster Distress Helpline is 1-800-985-5990 (call or text), free and 24/7.

🌍 OUTSIDE THE US

Emergency numbers: 112 works across the EU and in much of the world (and works on any GSM phone, even without a SIM). 999 in the UK. 000 in Australia. 111 in New Zealand. Look up your country's number and put it in your phone.

Hazards differ — earthquakes and tsunamis in the Pacific, monsoon flooding in South Asia, wildfires in Mediterranean climates.

Many countries have national alert systems — sign up for yours.

If you're a US citizen abroad, enroll in STEP (Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, step.state.gov) — free, and it means the embassy can reach you in a crisis and you get alerts.

Travel insurance with medical evacuation matters enormously abroad. Evacuation can cost $50,000–200,000 and is not covered by most US health plans.

Common mistakes

• No working smoke alarms, or alarms over 10 years old.
• No plan, only supplies.
• Never practicing a fire escape.
• Sleeping with bedroom doors open.
• Not knowing where the gas and water shutoffs are.
• No manual can opener in the kit.
• Not rotating water, food, and medications.
• No cash on hand.
• Assuming phones will work — no written contact list.
• Running a generator in a garage or near a window.
• Using a gas stove for heat.
• Candles during an outage.
• Driving through floodwater.
• Going back into a burning building.
• Not signing up for local emergency alerts.
• Not knowing basic CPR.
• Waiting to evacuate until it's obviously necessary, which is after the roads fill.
• Storing water in old milk jugs, or storing the whole supply in one spot.
• Buying the $200 kit instead of the $25 one plus the free plan.
• Renting with no renters policy, assuming the landlord's covers your things.
• Buying flood coverage after the storm is named — there's a waiting period.
• Wearing flip-flops through post-disaster debris.

Key numbers

Chapter recap

• Prepare for what actually happens where you live, not for a movie.
• Water, food, light, power, medications, documents, and cash cover almost everything.
• The plan matters more than the kit, and it's free.
• Text instead of calling during a disaster; designate an out-of-area contact.
• Working smoke alarms and a practiced escape plan are the highest-value preparation there is.
• Sleep with bedroom doors closed.
• Never run a generator or fuel-burning appliance indoors. CO kills after every storm.
• Turn Around, Don't Drown. Twelve inches floats a car.
• Learn hands-only CPR. You cannot make it worse.
• Leave early. The regret is almost always about not going sooner.
• If you don't drive, get on your county's transportation-assistance registry now, and call 211.
• Document everything before cleanup, and beware post-disaster contractors who found you.
• You are not behind on this. Stage 0 costs nothing and takes one evening.

Exercises

Do this right now (20 minutes)

31.1 — Test every smoke and CO alarm. Press and hold until it sounds. Then take each one down and read the manufacture date on the back — replace any over 10 years old, chirping or not. Deliverable: a count of working alarms per floor, and a shopping list if you're short. If you rent and any are dead, send the written request today (Chapter 12).

31.2 — Look up your risks. FEMA National Risk Index for your county, and the flood map for your address. Deliverable: your top three local hazards written down, plus — if you're coastal — your evacuation zone. Search "[your county] evacuation zone." One minute, and it's the single fact that makes the hurricane decision for you.

31.3 — Sign up for local alerts. Search "[your county] emergency alerts." Two minutes. While you're in your phone, confirm you haven't disabled Wireless Emergency Alerts — Settings → Notifications → scroll to the very bottom. A lot of people turned these off after one 3 a.m. alert and never turned them back on.

31.4 — Save the numbers. Poison Control 1-800-222-1222, your utility's emergency line, your non-emergency police line, and SAMHSA 1-800-985-5990. Add 211, your landlord or after-hours maintenance, your pharmacy, and your vet. Deliverable: a phone contact named "ICE — Emergency" holding all of them, plus your phone's medical ID filled in.

This week (3 hours)

31.5 — Build the kit. Water, food, flashlights, batteries, radio, power bank, first aid, manual can opener, cash. One shopping trip, roughly $150. If that's not a number you have this week, do Stage 0 and Stage 1 instead — the free evening plus about $25 — and add one item per grocery trip after that. Deliverable: three days of water per person actually stored, and a can opener you have physically located.

31.6 — Write the contact list. On paper. Everyone's numbers, your out-of-area contact, doctors, insurance. Copies in every wallet and every go-bag. Call the out-of-area contact and ask them first, and tell them what the job is: they're the hub everyone calls when local networks jam.

31.7 — Make the plan. Meeting places, out-of-area contact, evacuation destination and route, who's responsible for whom. Write it down and tell everyone in the household. Deliverable: one page, on the fridge and photographed on every phone. Include the sentence "our trigger for leaving is ____" — pre-committing removes the decision from the worst possible moment.

31.8 — Practice the fire escape. Actually do it. Two ways out of every bedroom. Test that the windows open. Do it once in the dark. Time it. If anyone stopped to grab something, run it again — that habit is what gets people killed.

31.9 — Photograph your shutoffs and put the right wrench near the gas meter. If you rent and don't have a main shutoff, find out who does and get their after-hours number. Deliverable: three photos — water, gas, breaker panel — saved somewhere you can find them one-handed at 2 a.m.

31.10 — Write the medical sheet. One page per person: medications with doses, allergies and what the reaction is, conditions, doctor, pharmacy, insurance ID, emergency contact. Paper copy in the go-bag, photo on your phone.

This month (varies)

31.11 — Build go-bags. One per person. By the door. Include a week of medications. Use the five-minute list from the panel above as the checklist, and put shoes next to the bag.

31.12 — Take a CPR and first aid class. Red Cross or AHA. A few hours, $50–110, and it's the highest-value item in this chapter. If money is the obstacle, call your fire department's non-emergency line and ask about free hands-only CPR training — many departments run it, and the AHA's free video takes about a minute.

31.13 — Do the home inventory if you haven't (Chapter 8). Video walkthrough, stored in the cloud. Narrate as you go — say what things are and roughly what they cost. Open the closets and the drawers.

31.14 — Check your insurance gaps. Do you have flood coverage? Earthquake? Does your policy cover additional living expenses? Know before you need it. If you rent and have no renters policy, get one — $10–25 a month, and your landlord's insurance covers none of your things. Remember flood coverage typically has a 30-day waiting period, so it can't be bought when the storm is named.

31.15 — Solve the transportation question. If you don't drive: call 211 or your county emergency management office and ask how to get on the transportation-assistance or functional-needs registry, and where the evacuation pickup points are. If you do drive: pick the trigger at which you fill the tank.

31.16 — Set the twice-yearly reminder. Daylight saving time: test alarms, replace batteries, rotate kit supplies, refill tap-filled water containers, check go-bag medications, review the plan.

Reflection

31.17 — What emergency is most likely where you live? Are you prepared for that one specifically, or for a generic one?

31.18 — If you had five minutes to leave, what would you take? Is it findable in five minutes right now?

31.19 — Who would you call if something went badly wrong? Do they know? Do you know their number without your phone?

31.20 — Think about the last time you were told to evacuate, shelter, or leave — a fire alarm, a weather warning, a building alert. What did you actually do? Most people finish what they were doing first. Knowing that about yourself is more useful than any equipment.

31.21 — Who nearby would have a hard time getting out on their own — an older neighbor, someone with a disability, someone with no car, someone whose English isn't strong? Do they know your name? In almost every disaster, the people who get out are the ones somebody thought of.

31.22 — What would it cost you to leave for three days tomorrow — money, work, childcare, pets? Name the real number. That number is why people stay too long, and it's easier to solve now than at 4 a.m. with the sirens going.

📋 ADD TO YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM

Create Section 31: Emergency Plan:

• Local hazards and your evacuation zone
• Out-of-area contact: name, phone, relationship
• Meeting places: immediate (outside the home) and neighborhood
• Evacuation destination and two routes
• Who is responsible for whom, and for pets
• Written contact list — copies in every wallet and go-bag
• Kit contents and location; go-bag locations
• Shutoff locations — water, gas, electrical — with photos
• Alert systems you're registered for
• Utility emergency numbers, non-emergency police
• Insurance: policies, claim numbers, whether you have flood/earthquake coverage
• Children's school emergency and release policy
• Medical: conditions, medications, allergies for everyone in the household — the one-page medical sheet
• Your evacuation trigger, written as a sentence: "we leave if ____"
• How you'd leave without a car: registry status, pickup points, who you'd ask for a ride
• Nearest cooling center, warming center, and pet-friendly shelter
• Whether you have renters or flood coverage, and the policy numbers
• Twice-yearly review date

As always: no SSNs, full account numbers, or passwords in this document.

Next: Chapter 32 — the chapter that, for anyone under thirty, is probably more financially important than several of the money chapters.