Family Communication Plan

-I've exceeded my unlimited texting.

When preparing for emergencies, you might think of flashlights, radio, water, food and first aid but few people think about planning for how to communicate. Suppose your child is at school when an evacuation notice is issued. The local phone lines will be overwhelmed. How will you find out where your child is at and how can they communicate to you?

Fortunately new technologies provide many options for social networking like texting, Facebook, and email. For the old fashioned, try calling a relative that is long distance. These are separate phone circuits and often work then local calls can not connect. Make sure everyone knows which relative to call.

To help you create a plan and share it, here are two sites...

1. Create a family contact plan online at http://ready.adcouncil.org/beprepared/fep/fep.do
This site prompts you for descriptions and contact information for all family members, plus work, and school, and police, etc and then location and phone for emergency family gathering sites. The information is NOT saved online. Instead you will print out wallet sized cards with this information for family members to carry.

2. The web site http://ready.adcouncil.org/beprepared/quickshare.html  prompts you for emergency contact information and then displays this back so you can copy and paste the information to friends (and your Bishop and EPS) via email. The following information is collected...

Emergency Plan information for <person X>
My Emergency Contact <a local person>
My Out-of-Town Contact <a distant person>
My Neighborhood Meeting Place <place>

Bottom Line

I hope you find this helpful. There are few things worse than not knowing the status of a loved one during/after an emergency.