Be Prepared Together
During a disaster, our neighbors are often the first to offer help and support! Or they may need our help to get through. Sometimes it can be 2-3 days or more before emergency crews can arrive and you may need to rely on each other. Helping each other and working together to face challenges can make a big difference! Be proactive - make a plan with neighbors and talk about how you can help each other in the event of a disaster.
Your Impact
Action Steps & Tips
Introduction
Helping each other in a disaster is much easier if you know your neighbors and have a plan for what to do! Creating a neighborhood emergency plan is easier than you might think! It just involves getting together with your neighbors and creating a basic plan to stay connected, help each other out and help neighbors that might need extra assistance in an emergency like elderly or handicapped neighbors. Get together to make your neighborhood plan with a potluck or other fun activity! It’s amazing how easy it can be to form connections now that will not only help in an emergency, but also create a more friendly, resilient and supportive community in our everyday lives.
How to do this action: Follow the steps below and create an emergency plan for your block or street.
Make sure to also complete the main household actions - Find Risks & Resources, Make a Plan, Build a Kit and Resilience for Homeowners or Renters to cover the basics of household emergency preparedness.
1Step 1: Get together
-
Invite neighbors to come together to learn about community resilience and emergency preparedness. A good group size to get started is 5-10 households.
-
Share your concern about being ready in an emergency and let them know you have found some great resources to help the neighborhood prepare.
If you don’t know your neighbors yet, find tips on reaching out and getting to know them in the Connect with Community action!
2Step 2: Create your neighborhood emergency plan
During your get together, here is a guide on how to create your plan:
-
Introduce Resilience: Let your neighbors know that you have been learning about how to prepare your household for a disaster and talk a bit about some of the steps you have taken. Share your experience of how easy it was and how you feel more prepared and safer having your kit and plan! Ask if folks have created their own household emergency plans and kits and share the Make a Plan and Build Your Kit actions on this site as a guide if they would like to learn more about how to prepare.
-
Talk about what could happen: Talk about the disasters that are most likely to occur in your region and what might happen (from the Find Local Risks & Resources action). Talk about how during a disaster it may be difficult to access resources like food or water and other challenges like power and cell service outages for a period of time. This is a time when neighbors can help each other!
-
Make a Neighborhood Plan: Ask everyone if they would like to make a plan to work together if a disaster happens in your neighborhood. Let them know this is easy to do and you have a few basic steps they can start with right away. Then create a plan for how you can work together as a community during a disaster:
-
Share plans and resources: Share some of the most important plan elements and resources you learned in creating your household preparedness plan. For example, if you live in a Hurricane or Wildfire zone, talk about evacuation routes, or if you live in an area with Extreme Heat, share information on the location of nearby cooling centers. What are some of the local organizations that can help like the local food bank or CERT group? If you may need to evacuate, consider talking about possible neighborhood carpools to reduce traffic during an evacuation.
-
Share contact information and skills: Share contact information with everyone participating and then create a list of disaster-specific skills and tools for neighbors on your block that would be useful in an emergency.
-
Create a contact list, then share this with everyone. Make sure everyone knows to print out a hard copy of the list (or two!) and have one copy of the list in their emergency kit. Then create a group text or WhatsApp group for everyone to reach each other quickly. You can also create a Google or Facebook group for communications.
-
Create a list of skills or resources that neighbors have and would be willing to share in the event of an emergency. Examples of skills or resources include medical or First Aid/CPR training, experience caring for infants or elderly people, a large water tank or solar power that could be used if utilities don’t work, or an extra room or bed to house someone if their home is temporarily uninhabitable. Include these skills on your list of contacts. If there is someone on the block who couldn’t make the meeting that has important resources that could help neighbors in a disaster, decide on someone in the group that will reach out to them after the meeting and ask if they would be willing to help and join the plan!
-
Get creative! Map out your block, draw the houses and list the resources, skills, and needs of each household. Take a photo and share with your group.
-
-
-
Make a plan to help neighbors that might need assistance: Talk about who on your block or in your neighborhood may need help during an emergency. Consider elderly community members, those with medical or functional needs, and children who might be separated from their parents in the event of an emergency.
-
Make a plan and designate someone who is responsible for checking on each of these folks - and helping them shelter or evacuate, if necessary. Make sure that each one of these community members is brought into the conversation, listened to and given agency and the opportunity to consent to any plans.
-
Helpers should exchange contact information with the person or household they will be helping in the event of an emergency, along with that person’s guardians or family if applicable.
-
Helpers should plan to check in with the person or household they will be helping to follow up, discuss the plan, and make any revisions to the plan to prepare for an emergency. For example: What kind of help will they need? What is the best method of contact? Make a back-up plan for someone else to help if you are unable to.
-
3Step 3: Invite more neighbors!
At your meeting, talk about inviting other neighbors on your block, street or apartment building to join in on the plan. Talk about hosting a follow up meeting and inviting more neighbors to join and learn more about the plan, providing them with the opportunity to get involved. Designate someone in your neighbor group who is willing to host, and someone who is willing to invite additional neighbors. Neighborhood meetings can be hosted at someone’s home or in a public place like a park, community center or cafe, whatever is most comfortable. Here is a sample invite:
-
“Hi, I’m your neighbor. It’s great to meet you! A few neighbors on our block are creating a plan to help each other in the event of a disaster. We have a basic plan started and would like to invite you to learn more about it. We hope you can join us! We’re meeting on [List the date/time/location and provide a phone number or email to ask questions or learn more.]"
-
Encourage people to let you know if they are interested but unable to attend! Consider having someone in your neighbor group designated to share information about the plan one-on-one with neighbors, providing an opportunity to get involved for those that can’t make the meeting.
4Step 4: Go big - consider doing a project together
Once you get to know your neighbors and start working together it is amazing what you can accomplish! There are many ways beyond your neighborhood emergency plan to help build community, sustainability, resilience and equity in your neighborhood and community. Here are a few ideas:
-
Create a project to plant trees or grow food on your street to share.
-
Create an Adopt a Drain program and share the task of keeping storm drains clean to reduce risks of flooding in your neighborhood.
-
Identify a neighborhood hazard like a dangerous intersection or the need for bike lanes and talk with your city as a group to advocate for a solution.
-
Connect with community level emergency preparedness efforts. Attend a First Aid or CERT training together.
-
Choose a project that builds equity in your community. Some project examples:
-
Learn about and support local BIPOC or LGBTQ owned businesses or businesses owned by people with disabilities.
-
Create a book club to learn about and discuss topics of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
-
Volunteer! There are many volunteer opportunities in every locality, but a few ideas could include delivering meals to those in need, tutoring people who are learning English or helping to provide fresh produce and healthy food to areas without easy access.
-
Donate to organizations in your community working on equity and justice issues.
-