Do You Have A Home Evacuation Plan?
And have you practiced it with your family?
For the month of March 2023, my self-reliance challenge included formulating a home evacuation plan with my husband for different scenarios and then actually practicing them with our family. I want our twins from a young age to be used to these things so that it comes as second nature to them if something were to happen. AND that emergencies don’t cause them to freeze because we’ve talked about them and practiced for them.
First Scenario - Fire
We have two scenarios that we’ve discussed that would require us to leave our house and the first one would be due to a fire. Within a house fire scenario, we then have two instances that could occur. The first is if we’re both home and the second is if my husband or I are alone with the family.
If the fire were to happen at night, the babes would be asleep in their room on the top floor. My husband and I would both go into their bedroom and grab one child and one bugout bag (we keep these in their closet for an easy grab) each.
If possible we would leave through the front door, take the kids out to a car and let the dogs run outside with us at the same time. We would put the kids into the backseat of my car with the car seats and then recall the dogs and put them in my trunk.
If we aren’t able to leave through the front door then everyone is going out the back door into the backyard. Which is actually a little easier to keep track of the dogs.
Mike and I keep our bug-out bags in the garage so we can easily access them after getting the kids and dogs to safety (as long as the fire isn’t located in the garage).
In the second scenario where we are home alone with the family, we are simply going into the babes’ room and grabbing both kids and getting out. In that scenario, the bug-out bags aren’t important and we would leave them behind.
We have also talked to the kids about what would happen if there was a fire in the middle of the day and neither my husband nor I were home (they’d be alone with the nanny). The kids are trained and we’ve practiced several times that they would go to the backdoor (which they can easily open) and let themselves and the dogs out. We’ve also instructed our nanny and babysitters to do this as well in the scenario where the back door is easily accessible. If they had to leave through the front the kids are the most important thing and the dogs can run loose and we’ll find them later. They probably won’t go far from the kids anyways.
Second Scenario - Power Outage Requiring Bugging Out
So the only scenario where we would leave our house due to a power outage would be if we cannot safely remain.
For this scenario, we have a packing list which includes a set of things that each of us would grab. As the kids get older we’ll assign one or two things to them so they are included in moving things to the front door so we could easily pack a vehicle or vehicles. We pack them up and then move to our bug-out location.
We have yet to practice this scenario with the family so that’ll be a fun game to try next.
Do you have an evacuation plan? Have you actually practiced it with your family?
Neither of these scenarios are meant to scare you. They are simply a reminder that bad things can happen and it’s better to be prepared and calm in the event of an emergency than fly by the seat of your pants.