New Year's Resolution #2 - Communicate Your Plan

You sat down and completed your disaster emergency plan, you put in the time and energy to make copies of essential documents, you learned the particulars of your kids’ school evacuation steps. Now, you need to communicate your knowledge, let others know what’s in your Readiness Playbook.

These days there are numerous ways to broadcast every detail of your life; use some of those same techniques to communicate your emergency readiness plans to your family. Not suggesting necessarily using social media, but a pdf of your plan emailed to family members may be useful. You may also want to scan and copy your plan for family members who don’t like the email method. Then there’s always the tried and true, sit the family down, put away all technology, and have a conversation explaining the plan and its points to each family member.

Keeping the conversation light but serious, especially when it involves children, is important. Allowing each member of the family to contribute their ideas and making sure everyone is on the same page is essential to making sure your plan is ready to execute when you need to evacuate.

A plan can only be effective when everyone knows what’s in it. Communicating your plan is an essential step in being prepared for emergencies.