Writing a Family Emergency Plan
Around 39% of households have any kind of emergency plan. What that figure hides is that most of those plans live in one person’s head — usually the person who reads about this sort of thing, who will be at work, unreachable, or the one in the ambulance.
A plan that only one person knows is not a plan. It is a secret.
The fix is one page of paper, an hour, and no money. What follows is the template and the reasoning behind each line, because the lines that look trivial are the ones that do the work.
The 10-minute version
- One page, on paper, on the fridge. Your phone will be flat, wet, or inside the house you just left.
- An out-of-area contact. Local networks congest and local people are dealing with the same emergency. One relative interstate who everyone reports in to solves it.
- Two meeting points. One near home for a house fire, one outside the suburb for an evacuation. Named specifically — “the big gum at the end of Reid Street”, not “somewhere safe”.
The one page
Write these eleven things. That is the whole plan.
1. The hazard. Which of fire, flood, cyclone, heat or extended blackout your address actually faces. Look it up on your state service’s site rather than guessing.
2. Two triggers. A “get ready” trigger and a “go now” trigger, each tied to something observable — a fire danger rating, a flood warning class, a cyclone watch. Not a feeling.
3. Meeting point one — near home. For a house fire or gas leak. A specific tree, letterbox, corner or neighbour’s driveway. Everyone including kids can name it.
4. Meeting point two — out of the area. For an evacuation. A relative, a friend, a shopping centre carpark in another suburb.
5. The out-of-area contact. Name and number of one person outside your region. Everyone calls or texts them, so the family reassembles through a hub rather than trying to find each other.
6. Who collects whom. Which adult gets which child, from which school or centre, and the backup if that adult cannot get there. This is the line that prevents two parents driving to the same school while nobody goes to the other.
7. Who is responsible for the pets. By name. See Evacuating With Pets.
8. Who needs help. Anyone in the household or nearby who cannot self-evacuate — elderly, disabled, medication-dependent, no car — and who is responsible for them.
9. Where the documents and the go-bag are. In one sentence, so anyone can find them.
10. Utility shutoffs. Where the water stop tap, gas shutoff and switchboard main switch are.
11. Numbers. 000. SES 132 500. healthdirect 1800 022 222 (Victoria: Nurse-on-Call 1300 60 60 24). Your insurer’s 24-hour claims line. Your electricity distributor’s outage line. The out-of-area contact.
Why paper, and why the fridge
Every part of this is designed around one assumption: the phone is not available. Flat, lost, drowned, or inside the house.
Paper on the fridge is visible daily, which means it gets absorbed rather than filed. A copy goes in the go-bag, one in each car glovebox, and a photo of it on each phone as a bonus rather than the primary.
Handwritten is fine. A plan that exists beats a plan that is being designed.
The conversation, not the document
The document is the easy half. The half people skip is saying it out loud to everyone who lives there, because that is where the disagreements surface — and disagreements discovered on the day are the expensive kind.
Three things to settle explicitly:
Leave or stay. For bushfire, this must be decided in advance and agreed by everyone. If the household is split, the answer is leave. See Leave or Stay?.
Who decides. If the trigger is ambiguous, who calls it? One nominated person, agreed now, prevents a twenty-minute argument at the worst possible time.
What we do not go back for. Say it out loud. Objects, then pets, then people is the wrong order and everyone knows it in the abstract; agreeing it in advance is what makes it hold.
Children, and how to do this without frightening them
Kids handle this better than adults expect, provided it is framed as knowing-what-to-do rather than as a list of things that might kill you.
- Make it a game with a right answer. “Where do we meet if we can’t get inside?” Repeated occasionally, cheerfully.
- Teach the meeting point by walking to it, not by describing it.
- Teach them to call 000 and to say the address. Practise the address until it is automatic.
- Give them one job — the pet lead, their own small bag, holding a sibling’s hand. A job reduces fear more effectively than reassurance.
- Answer questions plainly and briefly, then stop. Long explanations read as anxiety.
What actually goes wrong
The plan lives in one head. The failure this article exists to fix.
Meeting points are vague. “The park” is four entrances and eight hectares.
Everyone relies on mobile phones. In a large event towers lose power, backhaul fails and everyone calls at once. Texts get through where calls do not, and an out-of-area contact beats a local one.
Nobody knows who is collecting the kids, so two adults duplicate and one child is missed.
The plan was written and never rehearsed. The first walk-through always finds something — expired medication, a locked gate, a meeting point behind a fence.
No copy in the car. The car is often where you are when it happens.
It was written five years ago. Children changed schools, someone moved out, the dog died, the insurer changed.
Thresholds
| Situation | The rule |
|---|---|
| Writing the plan | One page, paper, fridge. Copies in the go-bag and both cars |
| Contacts | One out-of-area contact everyone reports to |
| Meeting points | Two, named specifically enough that a ten-year-old could walk there |
| Trigger ambiguity | One nominated decision-maker, agreed in advance |
| Household disagreement on leave/stay | Default to leave |
| School pickup | One named adult per child, plus a named backup |
| Review | Once a year, same weekend each year. Also after any move, birth, or school change |
| Communications | Text before calling. Report to the out-of-area contact, not to each other |
What it costs
| Tier | Spend | What it buys |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0, one hour | The whole plan: hazard identified, triggers written, meeting points chosen, contact nominated, roles assigned, numbers listed, copies distributed |
| Solid | ~$40 | A battery radio and a laminated copy of the plan. The radio is the one piece of equipment the plan depends on |
| Better | ~$120 | Radio, power bank, printed local map with both meeting points marked, a document folder for the go-bag |
This is the cheapest item on the entire site and the one with the highest return, which is precisely why it gets skipped in favour of buying things.
The drill: the hour, then the walk
The hour, at the kitchen table:
- Ten minutes. Look up your actual hazard on your state service’s site.
- Ten minutes. Write the two triggers.
- Ten minutes. Choose and write both meeting points, specifically.
- Ten minutes. Assign roles: children, pets, vulnerable people, the go-bag, the decision-maker.
- Ten minutes. Write the numbers, including the out-of-area contact. Ring them and tell them they are it.
- Ten minutes. Copy it. Fridge, go-bag, both gloveboxes, photo on every phone.
The walk, the same weekend:
Walk to meeting point one. Drive to meeting point two by your normal route, then by an alternative. Find the water stop tap and the switchboard on the way back and show everyone. Total: forty minutes, and it converts a document into something the household actually knows.
Then set a calendar reminder for twelve months out.
Frequently asked questions
What should a family emergency plan include?
The hazard you actually face, two observable triggers, two specific meeting points, one out-of-area contact, who collects which child, who takes the pets, who helps anyone who cannot self-evacuate, where the documents and go-bag are, where the utility shutoffs are, and the key phone numbers.
Why does it need to be on paper?
Because the plan’s whole purpose is to work when the phone is flat, lost or inside the house. Paper on the fridge also gets absorbed by everyone in the household, which a file on one person’s phone never does.
What is an out-of-area contact and why does it matter?
One person outside your region that everyone reports in to. Local networks congest during an emergency and local contacts are dealing with the same event, so reassembling through a distant hub works far better than trying to reach each other directly.
How do I talk to children about this without scaring them?
Frame it as knowing what to do rather than what might happen, walk to the meeting point rather than describing it, practise saying your address for a 000 call, and give each child one specific job. Answer questions plainly and briefly.
How often should the plan be reviewed?
Once a year on the same weekend, and after any move, new baby, school change or insurance change. Reviewing also catches expired medication and dead torch batteries in the kit.
What if my household disagrees about leaving or staying?
Default to leaving. A split household produces the late, partial, panicked evacuation that is the most dangerous option of the three.