A bug-out plan answers three questions before an emergency happens: where you’re going, how you’ll get there, and where your family will meet if you’re separated. Ready.gov’s family emergency planning guidance centers on the same three pieces — routes, meeting locations, and a communication plan — because households that figure this out during a crisis lose time they don’t have.
This guide covers how to pick evacuation routes, set up rally points, and decide when it’s time to leave instead of staying put.
Warning Signs You Shouldn’t Wait On
Some situations don’t leave time for a full decision-making process. Leave immediately, without waiting to finish this checklist, if any of these are true:
- Local officials have issued a mandatory evacuation order for your area
- You smell gas, see structural damage, or your home has active fire or flooding
- A fast-moving hazard — wildfire, flash flood, chemical release — is approaching and you have not been told it will stop before reaching you
- Emergency alerts on your phone or radio tell you to leave now
If none of these apply, you have time to work through the planning steps below — ideally before an emergency, not during one.
Evacuate or Shelter in Place: How to Decide
Most emergencies don’t require leaving home. Power outages, winter storms, and short-term supply disruptions are usually safer to ride out at home, provided your home is structurally safe and you have supplies on hand. Evacuation becomes the better option when staying poses more risk than leaving.
Lean toward sheltering in place when:
- Your home is intact and safe to occupy
- The hazard is not approaching your location
- No evacuation order has been issued for your area
- You have enough food, water, and medication on hand for the expected duration
- Water and sanitation are still functional or manageable
Lean toward evacuating when:
- Your home is damaged, unsafe, or expected to become unsafe
- A hazard is approaching and cannot be stopped or contained
- Local authorities have issued an evacuation order
- Your supplies are inadequate or inaccessible
- Water, power, or sanitation has failed with no near-term fix
Always follow evacuation orders from local emergency management or law enforcement, even if your own assessment leans toward staying. Officials often have hazard information — dam conditions, wildfire behavior, storm tracking — that isn’t visible from your house. For the home side of this decision, including what to stock for a multi-day stay, see our home preparedness guides.
Route Selection: Building a Primary and Alternate Route
Ready.gov’s planning guidance calls for identifying evacuation routes in advance, and for treating the most obvious route as unreliable — because if everyone in your area is told to leave at the same time, the main road out will likely be the most congested.
Steps to build your routes:
- Map your primary route. This is usually the fastest way out under normal traffic conditions.
- Map at least one alternate route. Choose a road that doesn’t rely on the same bridge, tunnel, or single-lane chokepoint as your primary route.
- Drive both routes ahead of time. Note fuel stops, road conditions, and any spot that floods or backs up in bad weather.
- Keep your fuel tank above half full. Gas stations lose power and run out of fuel fast during large-scale evacuations.
- Check whether you’re in a dam-failure inundation zone. Many local and state emergency management agencies maintain evacuation maps for areas downstream of dams, built to FEMA’s dam safety guidelines. If you live downstream of a dam, ask your local emergency management office whether an inundation map affects your route planning.
Keep a paper map or printed directions as backup. Cell networks are often congested or down during large-scale evacuations, and GPS apps that rely on live traffic data can send everyone down the same “fastest” route at once.
Rally Points: Where Your Family Meets
A rally point — sometimes called a meeting location — is a predetermined place your household gathers if you’re not together when an emergency starts or if you get separated while evacuating. Ready.gov’s family planning guidance recommends setting two:
- A nearby meeting point — close to home, for situations like a house fire where you need to get everyone out and accounted for fast. A neighbor’s driveway or a nearby street corner works.
- A farther meeting point — outside your immediate neighborhood, for situations where you can’t return home or are told to evacuate the area. This should be a specific address everyone can find, such as a relative’s house or a set location in a nearby town.
Write both locations down. Give copies to every household member old enough to carry one, and make sure kids’ school or daycare has a copy on file if someone other than a parent might need to pick them up.
Building the Communication Plan
Phone networks can become overloaded during a regional emergency even when the towers themselves are fine. Ready.gov’s guidance addresses this directly:
- Pick an out-of-state contact. It’s often easier to complete a long-distance call than a local one when networks are jammed. Everyone in the household should have this person’s number memorized or written down.
- Text instead of calling when possible. Text messages use less bandwidth and can go through when voice calls can’t.
- Save contacts as “ICE” (In Case of Emergency) in every phone, so responders can find the right person to call if needed.
- Print a physical copy of your contact list and rally points. Keep one in each vehicle, wallet, and bug-out bag.
What to Grab on the Way Out
Route and rally point planning only works if your household can actually leave fast. A prepacked kit removes the decision-making step during an already stressful moment — see our bug out bag guides for what a 72-hour kit should cover. Pair that with enough drinking water and shelf-stable food for the trip, covered in our emergency food and water guides, and basic gear for the route itself from our survival gear reviews.
Extra Planning for Households With Special Needs
Standard evacuation timelines assume a household that can move fast and manage on its own. Build in extra time and extra planning if your household includes:
- Infants or young children who need specific supplies (formula, diapers, car seats)
- People with mobility limitations, or who rely on medical equipment requiring power
- Anyone on medication that needs to be kept cool or taken on a schedule
- Pets, which many public shelters do not accept — know which shelters near your rally points are pet-friendly before you need one
- Older adults living alone who may need a check-in call or a designated driver
This guide covers planning logistics only. It does not cover medical equipment specifications, medication storage requirements, or shelter-in-place duration planning for extended events — topics we cover separately in our home preparedness section.
Keep the Plan Current
A plan that sits in a drawer for three years is a plan built on outdated information. Review and update it:
- Once a year, or after any household change — a new address, a new car, a child starting a new school
- After you drive your alternate route, to confirm it’s still passable and hasn’t changed
- After any real evacuation, while what worked and what didn’t is still fresh
Practice matters as much as the paperwork. Ready.gov recommends holding a household meeting to walk through the plan out loud, so everyone — including kids — knows the routes and rally points without having to read them off a page.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many evacuation routes should my family have?
At least two: a primary route and one alternate that doesn’t share the same bridge, tunnel, or single chokepoint. If you live in an area prone to wildfire or flooding, a third route is worth mapping in case two are blocked at once.
What’s the difference between a rally point and a meeting location?
They’re the same thing under different names. Ready.gov calls them meeting locations; many preparedness communities call them rally points. Either way, it’s a predetermined place your household gathers if separated — one close to home, one farther away.
How do I know if I should evacuate before an official order is issued?
If a hazard is approaching fast and unpredictably — wildfire and flash flooding are the most common examples — leaving before an official order can be the safer choice. Watch official alerts closely and don’t assume you’ll get advance notice.
What if my primary evacuation route is blocked when I need it?
This is exactly why an alternate route matters. If both are blocked, contact local emergency management or listen to emergency radio broadcasts for current road status rather than trying unfamiliar roads.
This article is for educational purposes only and does not replace guidance from local emergency management officials. Evacuation orders, road closures, and shelter availability vary by location and situation — always follow instructions from local authorities during an actual emergency.