Make a Tech Emergency Kit
Imagine a windstorm’s knocked out the power. Trees have fallen around your neighborhood, snarling traffic. Your phone’s got 12 percent battery left, and cell-service seems out of commission. Your text messages aren’t sending, and you’re not sure if you’re receiving them, either. You start to worry: is your kid okay? Will your husband on his way home from work?
Preparing for the Inevitable
Families set aside water, flashlights, and spare blankets for emergencies. A tech emergency kit belongs alongside them. It keeps essential information within reach when a power outage, natural disaster, or broken phone cuts off your usual access.
Protection from the Elements. First consider a waterproof and fireproof pouch. It’ll become the emergency bag that helps shelter everything else from the elements. Do you need one bag, two, or three? One to keep in the house or in the car? Think about the usefulness of the kit as we go through some suggestions.
Identity. Then, identify the documents you’d need most. Copies of identification, passports, birth certificates, insurance policies, medication lists, and essential household or business records. Put them into the emergency bag. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s preparedness guide can help you decide what belongs there.
Money. Drop in a credit card or two, and maybe add $100 in cash. Something you can use for short-term emergency spending.
Contact List. Now make a paper contact sheet. Include family, neighbors, your pharmacy, and anyone depending on you. Why paper? Well, what if your phone’s unavailable? What if the Internet can’t be relied upon? Add an out-of-town contact who may agree ahead of time to relay messages. Place the contact sheets into your kit.
Paper Map. We’re so dependent upon our phones we scarcely think about what life was like without them. Keep a paper map of your local area in your kit.
A Rendezvous Plan. Mark a nearby place — like a park, or a shopping mall — where your family could meet outside your neighborhood. Give everyone a paper copy of the addresses, and decide who will help children, older relatives, or anyone needing assistance. If traveling is unsafe, stay sheltered until conditions improve. Ready.gov’s family communication plan walks through these decisions.
Planning for Digital Disasters
So much of our lives are digital these days that it’s hard not to talk about a digital recovery process in the scope of an emergency kit. If there was a fire or if your principal computer system or phone was destroyed, how do you get back into your critical accounts?
Data Backups. Plan for the worst by backing up your data with inexpensive, cloud-based backup solutions.
Account recovery instructions and backup codes. Print out passwords to critical accounts, and where available, print backup codes: one-use codes that replace the usual second sign-in step. Google’s instructions show one example.
Emergency Contact. Setup an emergency access or a recovery contact where services offer it, and tell a trusted person where to find your emergency kit if you become ill. These preliminary arrangements will help ease the tension in a real emergency.
Plan for Congestion. Networks get overloaded during disasters. Texting and phone services may be rendered inoperable. As you can’t rely on these digital services during a natural disaster, coming up with a plan to work around them is the better alternative.
Other Considerations
Extra charging cords for your devices.
A crank radio will allow you to receive public updates but also charge your devices.
A hand-cranked solar charging kit might also make sense.
Battery-powered walkie-talkies — like these Motorola Talkabouts — have a 2-3 mile range. Radios can help you reach people nearby, but test them between your homes and meeting places before relying on them.
Spare batteries.
First aid kits.
Getting Started
You don’t have to assemble the whole kit in one afternoon. Start today with a printed contact sheet and a conversation about where your family will meet if calls won’t go through. Build from there, and revisit the kit together every few months to update details and check batteries.
When the next storm arrives, having a plan already on paper gives you one less thing to figure out in the dark.
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