What if you had to do an emergency evacuation? How well could you do it, bringing along your essential papers and other things? It could be due to fire or wildfire, earthquake, hurricane, some human craziness, or other disaster. This article will cover the most useful tip I’ve found and that is to create your own checklist in advance and keep it someplace very convenient. How about on the refrigerator or in the front of a handy file drawer?

We are all different, and no personal emergency evacuation plans template will be exactly right for your situation. They can be good to start with, and you could print one out, mark out the parts you don’t need, and write in your own additions. Getting something together, no matter how messy or crude, is better than nothing!

An Emergency Evacuation Checklist

If you suddenly realize that you are going to have to evacuate your home or office, your mind is not going to work as well as it normally does. Just ask anyone who has had to get out and they can tell you that they would have done better with a checklist. Sometimes people forget to put on their shoes. At other times, they bring unnecessary items like their favorite cooking pot.

To get you started, I’ve written a very basic home evacuation checklist here. You can copy and paste it into any program you use for writing, and then tweak it a bit.

And here is a link to my list  of 10 things to put in a family emergency binder. Just for fun, this page also lists some idiotic things people took with them when they were evacuating in a panic.

For a more comprehensive approach, the Department of Homeland Security has good information. And here is another article recommending a useful book, Emergency Evacuations by Lisa Bedford. She’s known as the Survival Mom and is a real expert. I’ve got this book and find it really useful, even with no human children in my house. I just pulled it off the shelf and put it on the corner of my desk to update my own checklist soon.

Please pin if you like this article… the Pinterest P is in the margin, along with some others. And do something very soon to get going on being more prepared for what might come!