Safety Basics: Emergency Contact List

Anyone who's been through a power outage knows how frustrating it is to search for a utility companies’ phone number. Coping with emergencies effectively means knowing how to quickly contact the people and systems we need for help.

We know what essential information we need but we often haven't put that knowledge into practice. In other words, our important emergency contact information is all over the place and not collected into one easy to access list. Often, we don't have an organized system. We have some phone numbers in our address book, some are on the refrigerator. Sometimes we have to find numbers on the internet. That's not always an option during a power outage when your router is down. Having things all over the place ends up not being very helpful.

It's important to have all our information immediately ready and accessible to everyone in the household. Let's talk about some of the obvious emergency contact information we need and don't worry, we'll have templates available as a resource for you to easily create your own list.

First, you need your medical information, the phone numbers of your doctors, dentists, local hospital, pharmacists, and specialists like optometrists. You'll also need the phone numbers for your community resources like the police, fire departments, poison control center, Red Cross and utility companies. It's also helpful to have the phone numbers of relatives and friends you can count on for assistance. And if there are kids or grandkids in your house, you need the pediatricians and school numbers too.

Some less obvious numbers we could include on our list would be an attorney, insurance agent, plumber, electrician, heating and air tech, and an internet provider. And if you live in an apartment, you need the number for your building supervisor. If you have pets or a service animal, include information for the veterinarian and the local animal shelter. And finally, it's important to have the number of a relative or friend some distance from us where we might stay if we have to evacuate.

There are probably lots of other numbers you can think of. But for now, the important thing to remember is that we include crucial contact information having to do with all aspects of our life. And everyone in the family should have access to this list and be able to read it.

So if the list is brailled and there are sighted folks in your home, keep a print copy as well. If there are kids and they're old enough, the children should know which numbers to call and when to call them. Now, you might be thinking I already have all these numbers in one place. They're on my mobile phone contact list. But here's a problem. Most of us lock our phones for security. Our contact list is not accessible on a locked phone. So if someone other than ourselves needs to get to that list, they can't.

Now, there are ways to make sure your emergency contacts show up on your locked screen of your mobile device. So if that's where you want to keep them, a bit of homework is needed. Each device has different settings for making that possible. But again, if the phone is away from home with the owner, so is the emergency contact list.

There's one more piece of information we need to organize and include in our contact list and that is an evacuation destination. If we had to evacuate, where would we go and how would we get there. If possible, have at least two destinations. Places like shelters or relatives or friends homes.

And everyone in the household should know how to get to these destinations. That means knowing the streets, the turns, compass directions (north, south east, and west), the landmarks, distances et cetera.

We should be able to direct a complete stranger to our place of safety without relying on anyone else for directions. Now some of us who are non-drivers sometimes rely on others to get us from point A to point B and we don't pay too much attention to routes and directions. That's a luxury we can't afford in an evacuation.

Remember, you are better of if you are responsible as much as possible for knowing where you are and where you are going. So it’s time to get busy. You can make a useful impact on you and your families safety. Putting together an emergency contact list won't take much time but having one handy when you need it will make all the difference in an emergency.