How Do I Make a Family Emergency Communication Plan?

Your emergency kit covers your physical needs. Your communication plan covers everything else: how your family finds each other, how you make decisions, and how you stay connected when normal routines fall apart.

FEMA and the American Red Cross both identify a family communication plan as a core preparedness step, alongside building a kit. The good news is that it takes about twenty minutes to put together.

The five things your plan needs to cover

  1. An out-of-town contact
    Pick one person who lives outside your area, a relative or a close friend. They're outside the emergency, so everyone can check in with them and they can relay news between family members who can't reach each other directly.
    When local networks get congested, text instead of calling. Texts use far less bandwidth and often get through when voice calls won't. Everyone in your family should have this number written down, and the kids should be able to say it from memory.
    Pick a backup for them too. One person can be unreachable.
  2. A check-in order
    This is the part most families skip, and it's where things get tangled. Decide who checks in first, how often, and what they say: where we are, who's with us, whether we're moving. Without an agreed order, everyone waits to see whether someone else already called.
  3. Two meeting places
    One right outside your home, the fire drill spot: a neighbor's driveway, a corner landmark, the community mailbox. Something familiar and easy to find in the dark.
    One in your neighborhood for when you can't get home: a school, a library, a park entrance. Let the kids help choose both; they remember places they picked themselves.
  4. Phone numbers written on paper
    Your phone can run out of battery, get lost, or stop working. Write the key numbers on a card: your out-of-town contact, close family, your children's school. Keep one copy with your emergency kit and give one to each family member old enough to carry it.
    One thing worth doing deliberately: leave your home address off any card a child carries. A card in a backpack can be lost or picked up by anyone, and the out-of-town phone number is what actually reunites a family.
  5. A school and childcare pickup plan, and a codeword
    Know exactly how your children will be released in an emergency. Most schools have specific protocols. Find out what they are, and make sure your children know who is authorized to collect them if you can't get there yourself.
    Pick a family codeword for anyone other than a parent doing the pickup. Practise it the way you'd practise a fire drill: calmly, more than once. Teach it as a rule about the word rather than a warning about people. "We only go with someone who knows our word" gives a child something to do, and it doesn't need to be framed as a fear of strangers.

Keep it simple

A family communication plan doesn't need to be complicated. What matters is that everyone knows it before anything happens, and that the important numbers live in people rather than only in phones.

Practice it once. Walk or drive the route to your meeting places. Make sure the kids can say the out-of-town contact's number out loud. That's the whole exercise.

A plan your family has practiced is worth far more than a detailed document no one has read.

Ready-made tools for this exact plan

If you'd rather fill in a printed template than build this from scratch, we've done the layout work for you. The plan holds your decisions; the card holds the details you carry.

Your Family Emergency Communication Plan, a free printable covering all five items above, plus what everyone should know by heart and a yearly review.

Your Family Emergency Communication Card, a full-size version for the fridge plus laminate-ready wallet cards, one per family member. Fill in the plan first, then copy the key details onto the cards so everyone carries them.

Both are free in our downloads hub. Enter your email once and you'll have access to all of them.

Ready to pair your plan with a kit?

A communication plan and an emergency kit work together. The plan tells your family what to do. The kit gives them what they need once they get there.

Shop pre-assembled family emergency kits, ready the day they arrive.

The guidance on this page aligns with Ready.gov, FEMA's preparedness campaign, and American Red Cross recommendations.