Family Preparedness

How can you prepare your family for an emergency? District Health Department 4 works to protect the safety of the community and can provide you with valuable information on how to best keep your family safe. Your family should prepare for a disaster at anytime. Whether it be a natural disaster, disease related, or an event of terrorism, you should have a plan.

• Be informed about the hazards that exist in our area and how they will affect you personally.
• Know what to do when a disaster or emergency does occur.
• Have a household/family evacuation and communication plan  in place so that everyone in your family knows what to do and where to go in an emergency.
• Put together an emergency kit with supplies to help sustain you until services are restore or help can be provided.

The following resources can be used to learn more about making your family prepared and resilient on an emergency:

• Do 1 Thing  Do 1 Thing makes it easy for people to get started preparing for disasters and emergencies. It lists one activity that you can do each month to help prepare yourself.
• Ready.gov  Ready.gov has detailed information about many types of emergency and disaster, along with informaton on how to make an emergency plan and kits. It has special information to help seniors, disabled persons, children, and families with pets prepare.)
• Michigan Prepares.  Michigan Prepares has information on the most common disasters and emergencies in Michigan and on how to make emergency plans and kits.They also offer a free, easy-to-use mobile app that acts as a tool to help you and your family create a basic emergency plan in a few quick steps.
• American Red Cross Senior Preparedness   This webpage has disaster preparedness resources designed to address the unique needs of seniors and people with access and functional needs in emergency planning.
• Emergency Preparedness for Expectant and New Parents. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed a feature on Preparedness for Expectant and New Parents.  In this feature, you’ll learn how to get prepared before a disaster and what to do in case of a disaster to help keep you and your family safe and healthy.  It also includes information on how to ensure your baby has a safe place to sleep if you need to evacuate your home.
• Learn the Safe Sleep Steps & for more information on infant safe sleep, visit www.michigan.gov/safesleep.