Make a family emergency plan and go-bag checklist

Fix it yourself in 3 steps

1. Write down who lives with you (ages, pets, anyone who needs medicine or extra help), the risks where you live (hurricane, flood, wildfire, winter storm, outages), and what you already have on hand. Look up your county or city emergency management page for your evacuation zone and local alerts.
2. Paste the prompt below with those details. Check the plan it writes against Ready.gov and your local emergency office, and fix anything that doesn't match your area. Never put account numbers, passwords or ID numbers in the chat.
3. Print the one-page plan and share it with everyone in the house, pack the go-bag from the checklist over a weekend, and set a reminder to review both every 6 months or before your local storm season.

Copy this prompt

Help me make a family emergency plan and a go-bag checklist. Our household: [number of people, ages, pets, anyone who needs medicine, mobility help or extra care]. Where we live: [city or county, house or apartment, car or no car]. Main risks here: [hurricane / flood / wildfire / winter storm / power outage / earthquake]. What we already have: [list, or 'not much']. Rules: 1) Ask me up to 3 short questions if something important is missing, then wait. 2) Use only what I tell you; don't guess my evacuation zone, shelters or routes. Mark anything I need to look up locally as [CHECK LOCALLY] and tell me to confirm it with my local emergency management office or Ready.gov. 3) Give me: a one-page plan (2 meeting spots, one out-of-town contact, who grabs kids and pets, when we leave vs. stay), a go-bag checklist sized to my household, a short list of papers to copy or photograph and keep safe, and a 5-line text I can send family so everyone knows the plan. 4) Don't give medical advice; for medicines, just remind me to ask my doctor or pharmacist about keeping an extra supply. Stop there and wait for my changes.

Type your details in the boxes above the message, then tap Copy & open. Leave a box empty if you're not sure.

Tips from people who've done it

• Official guidance beats the chat: follow your local emergency officials' evacuation orders and use Ready.gov's checklists to double-check the list.
• Pick an out-of-town contact; long-distance texts often get through when local calls don't.
• Keep the plan on paper too, since phones die and the internet can go down.
• Don't paste ID numbers, account numbers or passwords into the chat; list where those papers are kept instead.

Agents people used for this: Grok Bot, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude.