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Starvard University · Emergency Preparedness 101
In two weeks your household will have a plan, a kit, and the skills to get through the first 72 hours of any disaster. This course follows Ready.gov, FEMA, and the American Red Cross: calm, practical steps you can finish a little at a time, with no fear talk and no expensive gear list.
Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this course.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Sometimes a storm, a fire, or a power cut means help cannot reach you right away. This course helps your family get ready before that happens. You make a simple plan for how to find each other, pack a bag with water, food, and a flashlight, learn how to turn off the water and gas safely, and practice once so everyone knows what to do. Ready feels much calmer than scared.
Ready.gov, run by FEMA, says that after an emergency you may need to survive on your own for several days, so a kit is simply the basic things your household needs in one place. The plan comes first: how you will get alerts, where you will shelter, what route you would take if you leave, and how you will contact each other if you are apart.
The lessons build in order. You start with your local risks, then write the plan, then pack two kits, one to grab and one to stay home with. Later lessons cover storing food and water so nothing is wasted, turning utilities off safely, caring for neighbors and pets, and running a short family drill. By the end, preparedness is not a hobby. It is a bag by the door, a plan on the fridge, and a family that has practiced once.
The whole course in brief
What you will be able to do after this course
The ten lessons
Lesson 1
The first days after a disaster are mostly ordinary, and that is the hopeful truth. Roads may be closed, shops may be shut, and power, water, or phone service may be out, while crews work to reopen them. Ready.gov puts it plainly: after an emergency, you may need to survive on your own for several days. That gap, often described as the first 72 hours, is what this course prepares you for. It is not about expecting the worst. It is about bridging a short, known gap with supplies and decisions you made while calm.
What you will actually need in those hours is unglamorous. Water to drink, food you can eat without cooking, light after dark, a way to hear official news, medicines, warmth, and a way to reach family. Most emergencies in most places are shorter and smaller than the headline events: a power outage through a cold night, a water main break, a storm that blocks your street for a day. Preparing for several days at home covers nearly all of them, and the same kit helps if you must leave quickly.
Two habits matter more than any gear. First, know how you will get alerts, because good information turns worry into a short list of actions. Second, decide things in advance with the people you live with, because a plan you discussed at the kitchen table works far better than instructions invented under stress. The rest of this course is just those two habits, worked out lesson by lesson, until you have a plan, a kit, and one practiced drill behind you.
Lesson 2
Start where you live, not with a generic list. Ready.gov asks you to know which types of disasters could affect your area, and the Red Cross gives the same advice: plan for the emergencies most likely to happen where you live, learn, work, and play. For one household that means flooding and summer storms. For another it means wildfire smoke, earthquakes, or winter outages. Your county emergency management page and local weather office are the best guides to what belongs at the top of your list.
Follow local authority guidance first, always. Your city, county, and state officials know your roads, rivers, shelters, and warning systems, and their instructions during an event override any general course, including this one. Sign up for your local alert system, learn the difference between a watch and a warning for your main hazards, and note where official information will be posted. A battery powered or hand crank radio, ideally a NOAA Weather Radio with tone alert, keeps that information coming when networks are busy or down.
Write your top three risks on one page, with one line each about what you would do. Flood may mean never driving through water over a road and moving valuables upstairs. Fire may mean two ways out of every room and a meeting place outside. Outage may mean extra blankets, a plan for refrigerated medicine, and flashlights instead of candles. That single page turns a vague worry into a short, local, and honest picture, and it shapes every choice in the lessons that follow.
Lesson 3
A family plan answers five questions before anyone has to ask them under stress. Ready.gov frames them this way: How will I receive emergency alerts and warnings? What is my shelter plan? What is my evacuation route? What is my family communication plan? And does my kit need updating? Sit down with everyone in the household, talk through those five, and write the answers down. A plan that only exists in one person's head is not yet a plan.
Separation is the part families forget. You may be at work, school, or across town when something happens. The Red Cross suggests choosing two meeting places: one right outside your home for a sudden emergency such as a fire, and one outside your neighborhood in case you cannot return. Choose an out of area contact person too, because a text or a long distance call may get through when local lines are overloaded. Everyone should carry that contact in writing and saved on their phone.
Make the plan fit your real household. Ready.gov asks you to consider ages, dietary and medical needs, disabilities and equipment, languages spoken, pets, and school aged children. Put names, meeting places, and medical notes on a fillable family emergency plan or a plain card, share copies with the people on it, and keep one with your kit. Then practice the plan, as the next lessons will show, because a plan you have walked through once is the one you will remember.
Lesson 4
You need two kits, because emergencies ask two different things of you. Sometimes you stay home without power or water. Sometimes you leave in ten minutes. The go-bag is the leaving kit: light enough to carry, packed in a duffel or backpacks, with water, food, a flashlight, a first aid kit, medicines, copies of documents, cash, a phone charger and backup battery, a change of clothes, and comfort items for children. If you cannot carry it comfortably, it is too heavy to help you.
The stay at home kit can be bigger and heavier, because it never has to be carried far. Ready.gov suggests storing kit items in airtight plastic bags inside one or two easy to carry containers such as plastic bins or a duffel bag, and the same tidy approach works for a home bin. Add more water and food, blankets, sanitation supplies such as moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties, a manual can opener, local maps, a whistle to signal for help, and dust masks and plastic sheeting with duct tape for sheltering in place.
Keep kits where the emergency finds you. Ready.gov recommends supplies for home, work, and cars, because you do not know where you will be: a main kit at home in a place everyone knows, a smaller grab and go kit at work that can support you for at least 24 hours with walking shoes, and a basic kit in the car in case you are stranded. Label each kit with the date you packed it, and you are ready for the upkeep lesson that comes later.
Lesson 5
Water comes first, and the amount is simple. Ready.gov lists one gallon per person per day for several days, for drinking and sanitation. For a family of four, three days means twelve gallons. Start there, store it in a cool, dark place in clean, food grade containers or as bottled water, and add more over time if you have room. Pets need their own share, covered in Lesson 9. Write the date on containers you fill yourself, and replace stored water and check dates as part of regular kit upkeep.
Food should be food your family already likes. Ready.gov suggests at least a several day supply of non-perishable food that needs no refrigeration, cooking, water, or special preparation: canned meats, fruits and vegetables, protein or fruit bars, dry cereal or granola, peanut butter, dried fruit, and canned juices, plus a manual can opener. Remember special dietary needs and food for infants. The waste proof trick is rotation: store what you eat and eat what you store, moving stored items into normal meals before they expire and replacing them on your next shop.
Power cuts test stored food quickly, so learn the clock. Ready.gov notes that a closed refrigerator keeps food cold for about four hours, and perishable food that has been above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours or more should be thrown away. Keep the doors closed, use a thermometer if you have one, and follow the old rule: when in doubt, throw it out. Food that touched flood water, or food from swollen, dented, or corroded cans, goes out too, however fine it looks.
Lesson 6
Knowing your shutoffs is a quiet superpower, and the time to learn it is a calm Saturday, not a dark hallway. Find three things now: the main water shutoff, the electrical panel with its main breaker, and, if your home uses natural gas, the gas meter shutoff. Ready.gov includes a wrench or pliers in the basic kit for one reason: to turn off utilities when you need to. Keep the right tool near the shutoff, and make sure every adult in the home has seen each location.
Each utility has its own caution. Water is the most forgiving: turning the main valve stops a burst pipe from flooding your home, and it is safe to turn back on. Power is next: switch off individual breakers before the main breaker, and never touch a panel that is wet or standing in water; call the utility or an electrician instead. Gas is the strict one. Turn gas off only if you smell gas, hear hissing, or are told to by officials, and once gas is off, do not turn it back on yourself. Only the gas company or a qualified professional should restore it.
Teach it, do not just learn it. Walk the household through each shutoff, label the valves and breakers in plain words, and note the utility phone numbers on your plan. If you rent, ask your landlord which shutoffs you may use and which are theirs to handle. And if anything about a shutoff is unclear or feels unsafe, that is the answer: leave it alone and call the utility. The goal is a home you can make safe in minutes, without guessing.
Lesson 7
Some emergencies ask you to stay put. Others ask you to go. The skill is knowing which voice to listen to, and that voice is not this course. Follow local authority guidance first: when officials tell you to evacuate, evacuate, and when they tell you to shelter in place, shelter. The Red Cross makes the same distinction when planning: some emergencies, such as a winter storm, call for sheltering where you are, while others, such as a hurricane, call for leaving. Your plan should hold both options ready.
Sheltering in place means sealing yourself in safely at home for a stretch: choose an interior room, bring your kit in, keep a battery radio running for official updates, and use the plastic sheeting and duct tape from your kit only if officials advise sealing a room against outside air. Staying home during a storm or outage is simpler: keep refrigerator doors closed, use flashlights rather than candles, run generators only outdoors and away from windows, and check on neighbors when it is safe to do so.
Evacuating well is mostly decisions made early. Decide in advance where you would go: friends or relatives a safe distance away, a hotel, or a public shelter, and know more than one route in case roads are closed. The Red Cross suggests practicing your evacuation, driving your planned route, and plotting alternates on a paper map as well as on your phone. Leave early rather than late, take your go-bag and documents, lock up, and tell your out of area contact where you are going. If officials say go, going promptly is the prepared choice.
Lesson 8
Paper and power fail at inconvenient moments, so this lesson is about copies and backups. Ready.gov lists cash and important family documents among the supplies to add to a basic kit: copies of insurance policies, identification, and bank account records, saved electronically or kept in a waterproof, portable container. Add medical information, prescriptions, and your family plan. Keep the paper set in your go-bag, and an encrypted or password protected electronic set you can reach from another device.
Cash deserves its own line. Card machines and cash machines need power and networks, both of which may be down for days. Keep a modest amount of cash in small bills in your kit, enough for fuel, food, and a night or two of basics. It does not need to be a large sum, and it should be refreshed like everything else in the kit, not treated as a permanent stash you are afraid to touch and replace.
Phones are your link, so protect their battery and their reach. Ready.gov includes a cell phone with chargers and a backup battery in the basic kit. Add a car charger, keep a power bank charged, and know the habits that stretch a battery: texting instead of calling, dimming the screen, and saving the phone for real needs. Remember that your out of area contact and meeting places are also written on paper, because a dead phone should never mean a lost plan. Finally, keep a paper list of key numbers: family, utility companies, insurance, and your local non emergency line.
Lesson 9
No household prepares alone, and no plan is complete until it names the people around you. Start with a simple exchange: swap phone numbers with neighbors, know who has a spare key, a ladder, or medical training, and agree to check on each other after a storm or outage. Ready.gov's planning guidance is built on exactly this idea of a network, asking how people in your circle can assist each other with communication, care of children, business, and pets. A street that knows each other recovers faster than a street of strangers.
Pets are family in the plan, not an afterthought. Ready.gov is direct: if local officials ask you to evacuate, your pet should evacuate too, and many public shelters and hotels do not allow pets, so know a safe place in advance. Build a small pet kit with several days of food in an airtight, waterproof container, water and a bowl, medicines, a collar with ID tag plus a backup leash, a carrier, sanitation supplies, and a photo of you and your pet together. A buddy system with a neighbor covers the day you cannot get home.
Some people need extra help, and planning for them is kindness with a date on it. Think about older relatives, neighbors who use powered medical equipment, friends with disabilities or limited mobility, and anyone who may not hear or understand alerts. Ready.gov asks planners to consider disabilities and access and functional needs, including devices and equipment. Ask, do not assume: what would you need in an outage, and who should check first? Write the answers into your plan, arrange backups for refrigerated medicine and powered devices, and make sure someone is assigned, by name, to knock on that door.
Lesson 10
A drill turns paper into memory, and it can be short, friendly, and even fun. Ready.gov's final planning step is simply this: practice your plan with your household. The Red Cross suggests practicing evacuating your home twice a year, grabbing your emergency kit just as you would in a real event, and practicing a home fire escape plan at least twice a year as well. Pick a Saturday morning, announce it kindly, and run one scenario from your top three risks list.
Keep the drill honest and small. Time how long it takes everyone to meet outside. Check that children know two ways out of their rooms, that the go-bag is where the plan says it is, that flashlights work, and that everyone can find the water shutoff. Walk or drive your evacuation route once, noting the alternates. Let children carry their own small bag and ask the questions; a drill where questions surface is a drill that worked. If something fails, that is not embarrassment. That is the drill doing its one job, finding the weak spot while nothing is at stake.
Afterward, fix the short list and refresh the kit in the same hour. Ready.gov's upkeep advice is plain: keep canned food in a cool, dry place, store boxed food in tightly closed containers, replace expired items, and rethink your needs every year as your family changes. Update phone numbers, meeting places, and medicines, note the date on the plan, and set the next drill before you put everything away. You now have what the course promised: a plan, a kit, and a family that has practiced. That is preparedness, finished and maintained.
Sources
This course is built from the free preparedness guidance of the United States government and the American Red Cross. Every kit list, water amount, and shutoff caution in the lessons traces to one of these official sources.
Graduation
You named your local risks, wrote a family plan around alerts, shelter, routes, and communication, packed a go-bag and a stay at home kit, stored water and food that will actually be used, found your utility shutoffs, and learned when to shelter and when to leave. You planned for neighbors, pets, and people who need extra help, protected your documents, cash, and phones, and ran a drill to prove it all works. Keep the kit fresh, drill twice a year, and you are ready for the first 72 hours.
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A note on accuracy: Much of what you read at Starvard was created with help from AI agents, working alongside people. We check what we can, but we cannot guarantee that everything here is true, current, or complete. If something really matters, your health, your money, a grade, a job, please verify it with a trusted source before you rely on it.