Making a family emergency plan

Emergencies do not follow the family calendar. Often one parent is at work, the other is out, the children are at school or nursery. At the same time, in a crisis many people try to reach their relatives and phone networks are overloaded. Without an agreement, everyone searches one after another – with worry, detours and sometimes dangerous journeys.

A plan solves this problem in advance. It sets out how you are warned, where you meet, with whom everyone checks in and who takes on which task. Good plans are short, written on paper, known to everyone and have been tried out at least once. A plan that exists only in one person's head is useless if exactly that person cannot be reached.

Two meeting points are the heart of the plan. The first is right by your home, for example at a particular tree or letterbox – that is where you meet if you have to leave the house quickly, such as in a fire. The second is outside the neighbourhood, for example at friends' or at a public place everyone knows. It is for the case where you cannot get home at all because the road is closed or the neighbourhood is affected.

Add a contact person in another region with whom everyone checks in. That sounds odd, but there is a reason: connections to an unaffected area often get through more easily than calls within the crisis area. Short text messages often have a better chance than calls. Every person, including children, carries a contact card with the most important numbers and the meeting points – on paper, because a flat phone no longer shows any numbers.

Finally, you assign tasks: who picks up the children? Who checks on grandmother or the neighbour who needs help? Who takes the go bag and the pets? Each task should have a stand-in. All adults should also know where the main water valve, the gas shut-off and the fuse box are. Shut things off only if necessary and safe to do so, or when the authorities ask you to.

A family plan helps in almost any kind of emergency: power cut, storm, flood, fire, transport disruption. It costs hardly any money and takes away a lot of fear, because everyone knows there is an agreement. How the authorities in your region issue warnings – by sirens, radio, warning apps or messages to your phone – and how school, childcare and employers proceed in an emergency is something you find out yourself. This information belongs in the plan.

What the plan cannot do is replace instructions from authorities and rescue services. If a meeting point is in the danger zone, roads are closed or the school orders everyone to stay inside, those instructions apply. The family plan is then a basis, not a command. That is why good plans always have a fallback.

In acute danger the order is: your own safety first, then the emergency number (112 in the EU), then the plan. Nobody should go into a burning house, a flooded road or a closed-off area just to reach the meeting point or look for someone. If someone is missing, tell the responders – they have equipment and protection that you do not.

Care is also needed when shutting off gas or power. If you smell gas, do not operate light switches or appliances; leave the building and call the emergency number or the gas emergency service from outside. Leave any electrical work to professionals.

Sit down together once a year, for example on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Go through the plan, check the phone numbers and ask the children whether they still know the meeting points. Walk the route to the second meeting point together once so that everyone has seen it.

Children learn best through play and without fear. Explain calmly that the plan is like a seat belt: you hope you never need it, but it is good that it is there. Let them design their own contact card and ask now and then: “Where do we meet if we cannot get home?”