Five questions before you buy a kit

On screen the whole time: AI host - Owners voice. Sheets 2 and 3 when they are named. One mention of the workbook.

Before you buy a kit, there are five questions. How will we get a warning. Where do we shelter. How do we leave. How do we find each other. Only then: does the kit need anything.

The face is AI. The voice is the owner’s. I am not a doctor, a firefighter, or a certified instructor. I have not lived through the disaster in your town. Your local officials give the order.

Ready.gov’s plan page puts those five questions first. The kit is the last one. FEMA’s 2024 household survey found that cost was the challenge people named most often. A bag on a shelf can still hold about a gallon of water where four people need twelve gallons for three days. So we do not start at the store.

Question one. How will a warning reach the people who live here. Turn on Wireless Emergency Alerts. They need no subscription and no fee. On an older phone you may have to switch them on. Some phones call them Government Alerts. A child with their own phone can receive them too. Add a NOAA Weather Radio if you have one. Put up to five places in the FEMA app: home, work, school, the people you would go to. FEMA does not review or approve a local alert. Write the local opt-in page you actually checked. If you did not check one, leave the line blank.

Question two. Shelter is three different decisions, and they are not the same sentence. A mass-care shelter is a shared place. You look up an open one at the time by texting SHELTER and your ZIP code to 43362. Standard message rates apply. That text is not a promise of a bed. Sealing a room is a short step, and only when officials say the outside air is the danger. People and pets inside. Fans off. An interior room. Plastic and tape you already stored. Staying at home is the third instruction. Essential errands can still be allowed. Write, for each hazard that can hit your address, the local page you checked and the order that page gives. If the hazard does not apply, leave the block blank.

Question three. Leaving. There is no national line that says always stay or always go. If your house has no car, write how you will leave and who you will call. If it has a car, keep the tank at least half full, fill it if an evacuation seems likely, and take one car for the family. Write two destinations in different directions. Shut off water, gas, or electricity only if officials tell you to.

Question four. Finding each other. You may not be in the same room. Write an out-of-town contact and an in-case-of-emergency contact. Write four meeting places: a neighborhood place, a place just outside the home, a place outside the neighborhood, and a place out of town. Use those same names on the fridge card and the wallet card. Send a text before a voice call. Name the person who sends it. School, childcare, and work each get a pickup line if someone is usually there. Ready.gov has a free communication card in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese. Use that card. Copy the poison-control number from the current card. I am not going to say a number from memory. Both cards include 911. Leave account numbers off the paper.

Here is the order on paper. Write whether Wireless Emergency Alerts are on. Write up to five places for the FEMA app. Then one hazard block: the hazard, the local page, and one order. Stay home, a mass-care shelter, seal a room, or evacuate. If you cannot point to the page, that hazard is not done. Do not copy a hazard from a video, and do not name a city you do not live in.

Then the reunion lines. The same four places go on the card you will tape to the fridge. Walk to the neighborhood place once, on an ordinary day, and see how long it takes. That walk is practice.

A row that does not apply stays blank. An infant, an older adult, a disability, a powered device, a pet, a house with no car, a budget that stops at the free pass. Blank is a finished answer.

If you buy a bag today and skip the page, you still do not know where to meet, who sends the text, or whether officials want you to stay. The bag cannot answer those. Write them first. The gallon count is the next video.

Sheet 2 and sheet 3 on the table. Say the product name once.

Those lines are sheets 2 and 3 of The Household Count. The workbook is not on sale. The fridge card is free, and you can read the samples with no address.

Question five, and only now. Does the kit need anything. Pass A costs nothing: the plan you just wrote, the sealed water already in the house, the paper contacts, the flashlight you own. Pass B is ordinary groceries for the three-day count. A branded bag is not the first purchase.

Write the local page you checked. Then stop. If this is a life-threatening emergency, call 911.