Make a Plan

“But we already had our emergency,” insisted my daughter, Lauren, as we all sat down to dinner last night and I pulled out a clipboard with a printout of the “Family Emergency Plan” form I downloaded from www.ready.gov.

“Then this will be easy,” I said, pen in hand. And we started at the top with “Out-of-Town Contact Name.” And that was easy. Because in the event of even a whiff of an emergency anywhere in the vicinity, we’ve all got to call the grandmas anyhow, and both are sufficiently “out of town” (meaning out of range of fire and earthquake, the disasters most likely to strike our area) for the job.

“Neighborhood” and “regional” meeting places had also already been established in case disaster were to strike while we weren’t home and we couldn’t get into the neighborhood, so I just had to write them down. And it was easy enough to write down name, date of birth, Social Security number and medical info. for the family.

But then we hit a snag. It seems that we didn’t know the evacuation plans for our workplaces or Lauren’s school. That will require a few phone calls before we can finish up. Read on …