What Is a Family Emergency Communication Plan?
A family emergency communication plan is a written record of household contacts, meeting places, and an out-of-state contact that helps your family reconnect if you’re separated during a disaster. Ready.gov, the federal government’s public preparedness site, provides the core framework this guide follows.
What Belongs in Your Plan
Ready.gov’s family emergency planning guidance centers on a short list of information every household should have written down, not just stored in a phone. If a phone is lost, damaged, or dead, a paper copy is what keeps the plan usable.
Household Contact List
List full names, phone numbers, and any medical information (allergies, medications, conditions) for everyone in the household. Include contact information for each family member’s workplace and school, since you may need to reach someone who isn’t home when an emergency starts.
Meeting Places
Ready.gov recommends identifying safe, familiar locations where your household can go for protection or to reunite if you’re separated. Make sure any location you choose is accessible for household members with disabilities or other access needs, and think through where a pet or service animal could safely go as well. Two types of locations are worth having in writing:
- A spot near your home for sudden situations, such as a fire, where you need to get out fast and regroup close by.
- A spot outside your neighborhood in case you can’t return home or the immediate area isn’t safe to gather in.
For hazards involving high winds, such as tornadoes, also identify an indoor location in advance, since an outdoor meeting spot won’t help if the safest response is sheltering inside.
An Out-of-State Contact
Ready.gov’s planning materials identify a central out-of-town or out-of-state contact as a key piece of a family plan. Every household member should know this person’s number and understand they’re the point of contact if the family gets separated during an emergency.
School and Workplace Plans
Ready.gov’s guidance directs families to find out, in advance, how their children’s school will communicate with parents during a crisis and what the school’s own emergency procedures are. The same applies to workplaces. Knowing these procedures ahead of time means you’re not trying to learn them for the first time during an actual emergency.
What’s Verified and What You’ll Need to Confirm Locally
This section separates what’s established in the source guidance from what depends on your own household and location.
- Verified, from Ready.gov: the core plan elements are household contact information, meeting places (near-home and outside-neighborhood), an out-of-state contact, and school/workplace coordination. Ready.gov also provides a fillable Family Communication Plan card for recording this information.
- Verified, general planning principle: emergency plans should be reviewed and updated periodically, not created once and forgotten, since household circumstances and local risks change over time.
- You’ll need to confirm locally: your children’s specific school communication procedures, your workplace’s emergency protocol, and which hazards (flood, wildfire, tornado, earthquake) are most relevant to your area. These vary by school district, employer, and geography, so no general guide can specify them for your household.
- Not addressed by the source guidance: guaranteed cell service performance during any specific disaster. No plan can promise a call or text will go through — the goal is giving your household more than one way to try.
What Backup Methods Should Be in the Plan?
A written plan should note more than one way to reach people, since no single method is guaranteed to work during a disaster. Two situations are worth planning for directly:
- If a phone is lost, dead, or unreachable during the emergency, then a printed or written copy of your plan — kept in a wallet, backpack, or emergency kit — is what your household falls back on, not a saved contact list on a device that may not be available.
- If a household member doesn’t have a mobile phone, such as a young child, then the plan should specify how they’ll get information — for example, following instructions from a teacher or another responsible adult until a parent or trusted adult arrives.
- A phone number and address for your out-of-state contact, written down, not just saved in a phone.
- A backup meeting place that doesn’t depend on anyone reaching a phone at all.
How Do I Build the Plan Step by Step?
- Write down full contact information for every household member, including phone numbers, school, and workplace.
- Choose a near-home meeting place for sudden emergencies like a fire.
- Choose an outside-the-neighborhood meeting place in case you can’t get home.
- Pick one out-of-state contact and make sure every household member has that person’s number written down.
- Ask your children’s school how it will communicate with families during a crisis.
- Fill out a written or printed copy of your plan — Ready.gov provides a fillable Family Communication Plan card for this purpose — and keep copies in more than one place, such as a wallet, backpack, and home emergency kit.
- Practice the plan with your household at least once, and revisit it periodically as contact information, schools, or workplaces change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does an out-of-state contact need to be a close relative?
No. Ready.gov’s guidance describes this role as a central point of contact your household can reach and coordinate through — it can be any trusted person outside your immediate area, as long as every household member has their contact information written down.
How many meeting places should a family plan include?
Ready.gov’s framework points to two: one near your home for sudden situations like a fire, and one outside your neighborhood in case you can’t return home. For high-wind hazards, also identify an indoor location.
Where can I get a template for this plan?
Ready.gov publishes a fillable Family Communication Plan card that covers household contacts, meeting places, and medical information in one document.
How often should we update our plan?
There’s no fixed schedule in the source guidance, but the general planning principle is to review it whenever circumstances change — a new school, job, phone number, or address — rather than treating it as a one-time task.
Sources and Verification
This guide is based on family emergency planning guidance published by Ready.gov, the U.S. government’s official preparedness website, including its Family Emergency Plan resources and family-specific planning page. Supporting context on the importance of periodically reviewing and updating preparedness plans comes from FEMA’s national preparedness planning guidance. Where this article notes something as uncertain or dependent on local circumstances, that reflects the limits of what a general guide can verify for any individual household.
For more on how our editorial team sources and verifies articles like this one, see our Editorial Policy and How We Review pages. This article is part of our broader coverage in Emergency Preparedness and Self-Reliance. Learn more about our publication on our About page.
About This Guide
This article is for general educational purposes and does not replace guidance from local emergency management officials, your children’s school, or your employer. Always follow instructions from local authorities during an actual emergency, and contact local emergency services directly for any situation requiring immediate help.
By ThePreppersBlueprint.com Editorial Team. Last updated: September 2026.