You hope you never use it. Ever. It means a fire or other disaster. God forbid!
But just in case, you should protect yourself and your family with a plan. And practice it at least twice a year – we do it with the time change and replacing the batteries in our fire alarms.
A good plan has a few elements:
- several ways out of each room
- a meeting place
- an out-of-state contact
The first part of your plan should be several ways to get out of each room. An escape ladder like this is crucial for two story or more houses (you can get one from $35 up). You should talk about and practice how to get out from each room, show kids how to use an escape ladder, and get to your meet up location.
A good meeting place is near your house with an uncomplicated route and crossing no major streets, especially if you have little ones. It shouldn’t be too close, like your mailbox of driveway, but it shouldn’t be blocks away either. We use a street corner about 5 houses down.
You should have an out-of-state contact in case someone gets separated or your area is in a disaster of some sort. This can be a parent, grandparent, or good friends. You should put this into your child’s information in school, in their backpack on their emergency card, and have them memorize it (if they are old enough).
Soon to come: your in-house emergency kit and your car emergency kit.
Do you have an emergency plan? What else would you add?
