Who should the out-of-area contact be?

Someone reliable, far enough away not to be affected by the same regional event, and willing to take the role. A relative or close friend in another region works well. Tell them explicitly that they are the contact rather than assuming they would work it out.

What if family members are in different places?

That is the normal case, which is why the plan covers work, school and home separately. Each person should know what to do from where they are likely to be, and everyone reports to the same contact. The plan is about convergence, not about being together already.

How do you plan for pets?

Identify in advance which shelters or accommodation accept animals, since many do not, and keep carriers, food and vaccination records accessible. Deciding this during an evacuation is what leads to people refusing to leave, which is a documented and serious risk.

Does the school have its own plan?

Almost certainly, and it may not match yours. Ask what the school does in an emergency, who is authorised to collect your child and where children are taken if the site is evacuated. Aligning your plan with theirs prevents a parent driving to an empty building.

Outlast Blog

How Do You Make a Family Emergency Plan?

Updated July 1, 2026 · 6 min read · The Outlast Team

TL;DR. Agree two meeting places, one near home and one outside the neighbourhood, and nominate an out-of-area contact everyone can reach. Write it on paper, give a copy to each family member, and practise it. Plans that live only in one adult’s head fail exactly when that adult is unreachable.

Kits get attention because they involve shopping. Plans get neglected because they involve conversations. Yet the failure mode in most household emergencies is not missing supplies but four people making independent decisions with no way to tell each other what they decided.

What does a plan actually need to specify?

Where to meet if you cannot return home, where to meet if the immediate area is evacuated, who the shared out-of-area contact is, how each person will communicate, and who collects children from school or care. Four decisions and one phone number covers most scenarios.

Keep it short enough to fit on a card. A plan that runs to several pages will not be read under stress and will not be carried. The test is whether a twelve-year-old could state the meeting point and the contact number from memory.

Why an out-of-area contact?

Local networks become congested during regional incidents, while a call or text to a distant number often connects when local ones will not. Everyone reports their status to that one person, who becomes the hub. It removes the need for each family member to reach every other.

Text messages frequently get through when voice calls fail, because they need far less bandwidth and will retry. Agreeing in advance that everyone texts the contact rather than phoning each other is a small decision with a large effect.

Outlast app showing a household emergency plan with meeting points and contacts stored offline — A plan is only useful if it is reachable without a network, and on paper as well.

What do people get wrong?

Storing the plan only in a phone, which fails when the phone is dead or lost. Choosing a meeting point that is inaccessible in the scenario they are planning for. Never telling children the plan. Writing it once and never revisiting it as schools, jobs and addresses change.

The paper copy point is not nostalgia. Every family member should carry a printed card with the contact number and both meeting points, because the situation in which you need it correlates strongly with the situation in which your phone is unavailable.

Keeping the plan reachable without a signal? Outlast stores it offline alongside the checklists.

How do you practise it?

Walk the route to both meeting points with everyone who would use them. Run a communication drill where each person contacts the out-of-area number. Review the plan twice a year alongside the kit check, updating anything that has changed.

Practising also surfaces the assumptions nobody stated: that someone has a car, that a route is walkable, that a child knows the way. Those assumptions are cheap to discover on a Saturday afternoon and expensive to discover otherwise.

Key takeaways

Specify two meeting points, an out-of-area contact and who collects children.
Keep it short enough that a child can recite the essentials from memory.
Text an out-of-area number rather than calling locally during regional incidents.
Everyone carries a paper copy, because phones fail in exactly these scenarios.
Walk the routes and run a contact drill; review twice a year with the kit.

Frequently asked questions

Who should the out-of-area contact be?: Someone reliable, far enough away not to be affected by the same regional event, and willing to take the role. A relative or close friend in another region works well. Tell them explicitly that they are the contact rather than assuming they would work it out.
What if family members are in different places?: That is the normal case, which is why the plan covers work, school and home separately. Each person should know what to do from where they are likely to be, and everyone reports to the same contact. The plan is about convergence, not about being together already.
How do you plan for pets?: Identify in advance which shelters or accommodation accept animals, since many do not, and keep carriers, food and vaccination records accessible. Deciding this during an evacuation is what leads to people refusing to leave, which is a documented and serious risk.
Does the school have its own plan?: Almost certainly, and it may not match yours. Ask what the school does in an emergency, who is authorised to collect your child and where children are taken if the site is evacuated. Aligning your plan with theirs prevents a parent driving to an empty building.

The Outlast Team
Household Emergency Preparedness, BigBalli. We follow Ready.gov, FEMA, CDC and Red Cross guidance and keep it usable offline. General preparedness information, not emergency advice for a live incident.