How to prepare for a natural disaster

Generic preparedness advice is diluted by trying to cover everything. The useful version starts by narrowing to the hazards that are realistic where you live, because the correct response to each differs — and in some cases the correct response to one is the wrong response to another.

In an earthquake, the guidance is to drop, cover and hold on where you are, not to run outside. In a tornado, you move to the lowest interior room away from windows. In a wildfire evacuation, you leave early rather than waiting to be told twice. In a hurricane, the decision is whether to evacuate at all, and that is determined by your evacuation zone rather than by how the sky looks.

Find out whether you are in a flood-prone area, a wildfire interface, a hurricane evacuation zone, or a seismically active region. Local emergency management offices publish this and it is the single highest-value piece of information in the whole exercise.

Learn what the warnings mean, because the terminology is precise and widely misunderstood. A watch means conditions are favourable for an event and you should prepare. A warning means it is happening or imminent and you should act. People routinely treat both as advisory and lose the lead time the distinction exists to provide.

Know your evacuation routes before you need them, and know at least two. The obvious route is the one everyone else takes, and it is the one most likely to be blocked or congested.

If you rent, ask what the building's procedures are. If you have children in school or care, find out where they will be taken and who is authorised to collect them — that is a question best answered before an emergency, not during one.

A plan that exists only in one person's head is not a plan. Write it down, make sure everyone in the household knows it, and go through it at least once so that it is familiar rather than theoretical.

Agree two meeting points: one immediately outside the home for something like a house fire, and one outside the neighbourhood for a situation where returning home is not possible.

Nominate an out-of-area contact. During a regional emergency, local phone networks are often congested while long-distance calls still connect, and text messages frequently get through when voice calls do not. Everyone in the household calling or texting the same distant relative is a reliable way to confirm who is safe.

Make sure children and anyone who might be separated has that contact number written on paper, not only stored in a phone. Phones run out of battery, get lost, and are useless if nobody has memorised a single number.

Plan for the members of the household who cannot plan for themselves. Anyone with mobility needs, medical equipment requiring power, a service animal or a language barrier needs their requirements built into the plan rather than improvised. Pets need one too — many emergency shelters cannot accept animals, so knowing which do, or which hotels and boarding facilities will, is worth establishing in advance.

Know how to shut off your utilities, and keep any tool needed to do it near the shut-off. Gas in particular should only be turned off when there is a reason to, since restoring it usually requires a professional visit.

Decide in advance what triggers your decision to leave. Waiting for certainty is how people end up evacuating late, in the dark, alongside everyone else who also waited.

Water is the item people underestimate. Official guidance uses a benchmark of roughly a gallon per person per day, and the quantity adds up quickly for a household. Hot climates, illness and pets all increase it.

Food should be non-perishable and require no cooking, because the scenarios where you need it are frequently the scenarios where there is no power or gas. Include a manual can opener, which is the single most commonly forgotten item in any emergency kit.

Medications are the hardest item to stockpile and the one most likely to matter. Keep a current list of prescriptions with dosages, and talk to your pharmacist about whether an emergency supply is possible under your plan and state rules. If anyone in the household depends on refrigerated medication or powered medical equipment, that needs a specific plan including a backup power source.

Include a battery or hand-crank radio. When cellular networks and internet fail, broadcast radio is often still transmitting, and it is the fallback that has repeatedly outlasted every newer technology in real disasters.

Keep cash in small denominations. Card networks and ATMs depend on power and connectivity, and after a serious outage the businesses that remain open are frequently cash-only and unable to give change.

Copy your important documents: identification, insurance policies, deeds or lease, medical records, prescriptions, bank details and a list of emergency contacts. Keep both a physical copy in a waterproof container and an encrypted digital copy that you can reach from another device. Photograph or video the contents of your home too — proving what you owned is the difference between a smooth insurance claim and a contested one.

Review the kit periodically. Water and food expire, batteries corrode, medications go out of date, children outgrow clothing and phone charger connectors change. A kit assembled once and never revisited is often several devices out of date by the time it is opened.

Do not forget the practical unglamorous items: sturdy shoes near the bed for broken glass, work gloves, a whistle, dust masks, sanitation supplies and copies of house and car keys.

Wireless Emergency Alerts are sent to mobile phones in an affected area automatically and require no signup, covering imminent threats and evacuation orders. They are broadcast to a geographic area rather than to subscribers, which means they reach visitors as well as residents.

Local systems are separate and usually require you to register. Counties and cities run their own alerting for evacuations, boil-water notices and local hazards, and these often carry the most actionable detail. Signing up takes a few minutes and is the step most people skip.

Have more than one way to receive warnings. A weather radio with an alert tone works when the power and the cellular network do not, which is precisely when overnight warnings are most dangerous to miss.

Insurance deserves attention well before a threat appears. The most consequential fact is that standard homeowners and renters policies do not cover flood damage — flood cover is a separate policy, and it typically has a waiting period before it takes effect. Buying as a storm approaches is generally too late by design.

Earthquake damage is likewise usually excluded from standard policies and requires separate cover or an endorsement in states where it is available.

Read your policy for how it settles claims. Replacement cost and actual cash value produce very different payouts on an older roof or older contents, and the difference is discovered at the worst possible moment. Check your deductible too, since hurricane and wind deductibles are often calculated as a percentage of the insured value rather than a flat amount, and can be far larger than expected.

Financial preparedness is part of emergency preparedness. Knowing where your policies are, keeping some accessible savings, and holding physical copies of account information means that losing your home does not also mean losing the ability to prove what you are owed.

Fraud follows disasters with complete reliability, and it targets people at their least able to scrutinise anything. Recognising the standard patterns in advance is genuinely protective.

Contractor fraud is the most common. The signs are consistent: someone who appears unsolicited at your door immediately after the event, demands a large payment up front, pressures you to sign quickly, has no verifiable local address, and cannot produce a state licence. Verify licensing with your state, get more than one written estimate, never pay in full before work is done, and never sign anything that assigns your insurance claim to a contractor without understanding exactly what it gives away.

Charity fraud spikes alongside it, with organisations appearing overnight with names close to well-known ones. Give to charities you can independently verify rather than to whoever contacts you first, and be especially cautious with requests for payment by wire transfer, gift card or cryptocurrency — legitimate charities do not need those.

Federal disaster assistance is applied for through official government channels and does not require a fee. Anyone offering to secure aid for you in exchange for payment, or claiming to be a government inspector who needs your bank details, is committing fraud. Genuine inspectors carry identification you are entitled to check.

Document everything before you clean up. Photograph and video the damage from multiple angles, keep receipts for temporary repairs and accommodation, and make only the emergency repairs needed to prevent further damage before an adjuster has seen it.

Report the claim quickly, keep a written log of every conversation with your insurer including names and dates, and if the settlement seems wrong, your state insurance department handles complaints and can require a response.

Be careful returning home. Downed power lines, contaminated floodwater, structural damage and carbon monoxide from generators used indoors cause a substantial share of post-disaster deaths — a pattern that is well documented and almost entirely preventable. Generators belong outdoors, well away from windows and doors, without exception.