Updated: 2020-12-06
The Family Emergency Planning form has been updated (fixed typo)
Utilities Annex has been added
If you haven’t read the overview article on Family Emergency Planning please do so here.
This information covers the specific information on the Family Emergency Plan and the different annexes. The plan was developed with annexes so that the various sections are easier to develop and manage. It also allows you to share specific annexes, without necessarily sharing the entire plan.
The Family Emergency Plan consists of the basic plan plus any number of annexes. The main plan can be downloaded below.
Annexes can include:
- Personal Family Information
- Communications Plan
- Triggers
- Routes
- Phone Tree
- Mutual Assistance Group (MAG) members & contact information
- Area Assessment information
- Contingency Binder checklist
- Emergency Evacuation Checklist
As each annex is made available the link will be enabled in the list above.
Each page has a “date updated” at the bottom of the page. This allows you to indicate when information on that specific page was updated.
As you can appreciate a considerable amount of time and work has gone into developing these documents for you so that you have some tools to develop a comprehensive plan for your family. Please don’t distribute it, please refer them to my page so they can contribute to this project as Patron members.
Plan Storage
The plan should be kept on a password enabled USB or other secure drive. You should also keep a password protected copy on a secure cloud storage media. You should make several copies and keep them in bug out and get home bags. I suggest you incorporate a date in the file name so you know when that particular copy is updated.
If you print a copy keep it in a secure place. It will contain personal identifiable and other information that you might want to keep confidential.
The Family Emergency Plan workbook can now be ordered in loose leaf or a book format
Improvements
I’ve enabled comments on this page. If you have any suggestions for improvements, or other feedback on this project please list them below.
Instructions for Completing the Plan
Page 1
Complete information for each person.
Coordinates should be entered as UTM and an online converter that will convert address or lat/long to UTM can be found at https://coordinates-converter.com/
I also found this very good smart phone app that can be set to any number of GPS formats called Commander Compass Go – this is a free (lite) version of Spyglass. The free version is more than adequate to provide accurate coordinates.
UTM is recommended as this is what GPS units can be programmed to map.
In the event of a major disaster many street signs may be damaged or destroyed.
Phone numbers – enter all numbers for each person. Prioritize the order they should be called based on the P.A.C.E. acronym.
Page 2 – Emergency Out of State Contacts
Emergency contacts are your out of state contacts.
In disasters local communications can be disrupted. Your out of state contact may be reachable and you and family members can leave messages with that contact.
If you are both ham radio operators you can possibly reach each other with linked repeaters or HF (see Communications Plan annex). You should include their local linked repeaters. These can be found by going to https://www.repeaterbook.com/ and then to the state and then to the IRLP, Echolink and AllStar repeater look-ups. List the repeater local to your out of state contact. Your local repeaters will be listed in the Communications Plan annex.
If your out of state contact isn’t a ham you can look up local hams by going to the FCC ULS and then search by street and city. This can take some time to narrow down to a local operators. Another option to get a message to an out of state contact if all communications are down is to send a message by the ham radio National Traffic System. This is a modern version of the old telegraph system – ham radio operators pass messages across the state on a schedule every day. You will build this information in the Communications Plan annex.
Page 3 – Rally Points
Rally points are locations that you select that where you can meet if you can’t get to your home.
If can be a friends home or other location. Be as descriptive as possible in the location, even it it is a house – describe it or any significant visible highlight.
Each location should be given a code name. This is something that you can refer to it by in a text message or other means without giving out the exact location over a method that could be heard by others.
Page 5 – Message Drops
Message drops are locations where you can leave messages for people. This could be that you have left to go to a specific location.
These should also be given a code name.
Page 6 – Schools / Day Care
All the schools and day cares your children go to should be listed.
Final Thoughts
“If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere”
Henry A Kissinger
Having a family emergency plan is probably the first step in preparedness. It is great is you have the “beans, bullets and bandaids” but having a plan is critical. Knowing that your family is all on the same page, knows where to meet, how to contact each other and what your triggers are is vital.
In a future article we will go in depth at how to do a threat assessment.