After the ladder

Some days you stay. Some days you leave.

This page is the response, not a catalog of disasters. We are not building the storm chapter or the flood chapter yet. Those will plug in here later: which move, and which rung you already needed.

Hunker down

You stay because leaving is the more dangerous move. The roads are worse than the house. The hazard is outside. Officials have said to shelter where you are. You can still breathe, and the building is still a building.

What you needed first was 201: water, food, medicine, a light, and a way to hear warnings without the internet. 101 still matters, because “stay” includes “the house becomes unsafe and we move to the outside meeting spot.”

Evacuate

You leave because the place you are in is the hazard, or because an official order says go. Fire, a gas leak, a structure that is failing, water that will be over the house, a chemical spill. You do not need a hurricane essay to recognize that list.

What you needed first was 101: a bag you can carry, an address outside the area, paper numbers, and a household that knows who grabs whom. Ready.gov’s evacuation page is the federal version of “go now, and go with a plan.”

How a type of emergency will fit, later

When this site does take on a specific hazard, the page will answer three questions and then get out of the way.

  1. Is the usual move to stay, to leave, or does it depend on a trigger you can name ahead of time?
  2. Which rung does that move assume you already finished?
  3. What does the official source say, linked, not rewritten into fake authority?

Until those pages exist, do not wait on them. A go bag and a shutoff map help on days that are not famous.

Warnings

A NOAA Weather Radio is how a lot of official alerts still arrive when the phone network is busy or dark. Local emergency management, the county, and the fire department outrank a website. If their instruction and this page ever disagree, follow them.