An evacuation order gives you minutes, not hours. A grab bag is the five-minute answer — one bag per person, packed in a calm week, sitting by the door for the bad one. This is the complete list, in the order that matters.
Everything here assumes 72 hours of self-sufficiency, the standard used by emergency management agencies across North America. Check items off as you pack — this page remembers your progress on this device.
A 7-day supply of every prescription, in original labelled containers, plus a written or photographed copy of each prescription and your pharmacy's phone number. Refilling a prescription from an evacuation centre, without the bottle, in another town, is one of the hardest problems in any disaster. Include glasses or spare contacts, hearing-aid batteries, and any medical device — with its power supply.
A charger and cable for every phone, tablet, and laptop in the household, a charged power bank (two is better), and a car charger. Your phone is your alert system, your claim camera, your document vault, and your family's lifeline — and it is useless at 4%. Keep power banks topped up; they self-drain over months.
These stay in the bag year-round. One bag per person; a backpack beats a duffel because it leaves your hands free. Tell everyone in the household where the bags live.
Wildfire smoke, evacuation in 30°C weather, and storm-season power failures are the summer scenarios. Add these to the core kit from roughly May through October.
Ice storms, blizzards, and multi-day power failures are the winter scenarios — and the vehicle kit stops being optional, because winter's signature emergency is being stranded in the car. Add these from roughly November through April.
Twice a year, when the clocks change, the kit gets twenty minutes. That's the whole system.
These are the agencies that set the preparedness standards this guide is built on. Check them yourself.