Emergency Plan Template: The 7 Sections a Family Plan Needs

Search "emergency plan template" and you get forty PDFs that all want the same evening of your life. The template is genuinely worth the evening. The difference between families that manage a bad day and families that spiral is rarely supplies; it is whether everyone already knows where to go and who to call.

Here is the complete template as a fill-in outline. Work through it top to bottom and you are done in about an hour.

1. Contacts, with one out-of-town anchor#

List every family member's cell, school, and workplace number, then the numbers nobody memorizes anymore: doctor, vet, insurance, utilities, poison control (1-800-222-1222). Then the piece most homemade plans miss, straight from FEMA's family communication guidance: an out-of-town contact. Local circuits jam after a disaster while long-distance often connects, so a relative in another state becomes the switchboard everyone reports to. Ask them first. Give the number to the kids on a wallet card.

2. Two meeting points#

One near home for fast events (the neighbor's porch, the big tree on the corner) and one outside the neighborhood for anything that closes your street (the library parking lot, a relative's house). Name them precisely. "The park" fails when the park has four entrances.

3. Routes out, and what rides along#

Two ways out of the neighborhood in different directions, written down because the obvious one is the one everybody else is on. Note where the go-bags live and who grabs which bag, which child, which animal. Assign by name; "someone grabs the dog" means no one does.

4. Where the house turns off#

Water main, gas meter, electrical panel: location of each, plus the wrench that the gas valve needs, zip-tied next to it. Mark which events call for which shutoff (gas only when you smell it or after quake damage; water when pipes burst or you evacuate in a freeze, as covered in the winter heat-loss guide). This section is the one the babysitter and the in-laws should be able to follow cold.

5. Papers you'd hate to re-create#

IDs, insurance declarations, deed or lease, medication lists, vaccination records, a photo of each family member, key account numbers. Copies in one grab-able folder, scans somewhere you can reach from any phone. If you keep an emergency binder, this section just points at it, including where the emergency cash lives.

6. Medical and pets#

Allergies, prescriptions with doses, the pharmacy, each pet's carrier location, food, and the one hotel chain nearby that takes animals, looked up today instead of from the car.

7. The communication fallback ladder#

Text before calling (texts queue through jams). If texts fail, everyone contacts the out-of-town anchor. If phones are down entirely, notes go on the refrigerator when leaving, and the meeting points take over. Agree on this ladder out loud once; that conversation is the actual plan.

Then make it real with two drills a year: one walk-through of the shutoffs with everyone watching, one actual drive of the secondary route. Set both to the clock changes, which is also when the plan's numbers get a review.

The template is the easy half#

An evening fills out the sections above, and honestly, any of those forty PDFs can hold the answers. The half that keeps families up at night is the inventory behind the plan: whether the house actually holds enough food, water, and light for the days the plan assumes you'll shelter.

Provision Planner covers both halves: it prints your plan as one PDF, with the who-to-call page built from your saved contacts, the family sheet from this template ready to fill in together, and your real supplies counted into days of coverage so the plan's assumptions are true. Template in hand, numbers checked, one evening total.