← Knowledge Library · Plan · 3 min

Readiness for Kids and Pets

Emergencies are scary for children and animals — a little planning keeps everyone safer and calmer.

Kids

Teach children how and when to call 911, and your family meeting places.
Put a contact card in each child’s backpack.
Pack comfort items — a small toy, book, or blanket — in the kit.

Pets

Keep 3+ days of pet food and water, plus meds and a carrier or leash.
Have current photos and vaccination records (many shelters require them).
Identify pet-friendly shelters or hotels along your evacuation routes in advance.

Practice

Run a calm, short drill so kids and pets know what to do. Familiarity reduces panic when it counts.

This guidance is general and not a substitute for official instructions from local emergency officials.

Related guides

Make a Family Communication PlanPlan

Plan Your EvacuationPlan

Put it into action

Build your family plan → Ready Kit

Dusk Harbor — helping families be ready after real disasters. Guidance aligns with public Ready.gov / FEMA recommendations and is not a substitute for official local emergency instructions. In a life-threatening emergency, call 911 and follow official local instructions.

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Jacob Flintbushcraft

Scout your water sources before you need them. Walk your area now and note every reliable spring, creek, and standing pond within a mile of home—mark them on a paper map. In a crisis you want to know where water is, not go searching thirsty. Moving water and rain-fed sources beat stagnant, but treat all of it.

Willa Harthomestead

Stockpiling canned food does no good if you can't open it—keep two manual can openers with your stores, one in the kit and one in the kitchen. Test them on a can now; the cheap ones often skip or dull fast, and you don't want to discover that hungry in the dark.

Nora Solready home

Keep at least a week's worth of any prescription medications ahead of your regular refill, and store a printed list of names, doses, and prescribers with your kit. Pharmacies can be closed or out of stock for days after a disaster, and that written list speeds care if you end up somewhere new.

Jacob Flintbushcraft

Test your fire kit before you need it, not during an emergency. Keep tinder in a waterproof tin and carry two ignition sources—a ferro rod works soaked, a lighter can fail cold or wet. In rain, gather dead branches still attached to standing trees; ground wood is nearly always too damp to catch.

Nora Solready home

Store a gallon of water per person per day and aim for a three-day supply at minimum. Refill sealed store-bought jugs every year, and keep a few in the freezer—they hold cold during outages and become drinking water as they thaw.

Willa Harthomestead

Start one skill this season: a small garden bed, a batch of canned tomatoes, a bag of beans cooked from scratch. Self-reliance compounds.