The Pacific Northwest emergency checklist

Covers: Alaska, Oregon, Washington

This is an emergency checklist for Pacific Northwest households. Your own state emergency offices ask for something few others do: two weeks of self-sufficiency, because of the Cascadia earthquake risk. This checklist gives you that standard with exact amounts, and lets you build past it. Start with 3 days to get moving, then take the 10- and 30-day lists seriously; here they're not the advanced course. For a family of four, the 3-day list begins with 12 gallons of water.

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What is Cascadia, and why two weeks?

A fault off the coast capable of a magnitude-9 earthquake, the kind this coastline has produced before and will again. The official planning assumption is blunt: after a full rupture, roads, power, and water west of the Cascades could take weeks to restore, and coastal communities longer than that. That's why Oregon and Washington run "2 Weeks Ready" programs instead of the usual 72-hour advice, and why this region's 10-day checklist is the real starting target, not the stretch goal. Nothing about that assumption is exotic. It's the same water, food, heat, light, and information as everywhere else. There's just more of it, and this checklist does that math for your household.

What does two weeks actually look like?

For a family of four: 56 gallons of water, food that needs no working kitchen, light and battery power for fourteen nights, and a sanitation plan, because toilets stop with the water. Laid out as a list it's very buyable; your checklist breaks it into exact items and amounts, and the 10-day list gets you most of the way there.

What if you're in a tsunami zone?

Then the go-bag matters more than the pantry. After a Cascadia quake, the wave arrives in minutes on the outer coast, and the plan is on foot, uphill, immediately, without waiting for a siren or a phone alert. Know your zone and walk your route to high ground once, so your feet know it. One bag per person, staged where you sleep, documents and medications inside.

What about winter storms and outages?

Ice and wind take this region's grid down every winter, mountain passes close, and atmospheric rivers flood the valleys in between.

Pick the smallest room you can all sleep in, seal it, and heat that room only. Your checklist covers what that takes: an indoor-safe propane heater sized for a bedroom, the fuel to run it, sleeping bags rated for real cold, and wool blankets. It also includes carbon monoxide alarms, because the deadliest mistakes of February 2021 were heating mistakes. Never run a generator, grill, or camp stove indoors. If you burn anything for heat, a working CO alarm is part of the kit, not an extra.

And smoke season?

N95 respirators are on every checklist. Smoke now arrives most summers, local fire or not, and the same respirators serve quake dust and cleanup work. Add the checklist's closed-window plan for the smoky stretch of August: pick the tightest room, seal it, and let the respirators cover the trips outside.

How much water?

One gallon per person, per day. Four people for three days is 12 gallons; two weeks is 56. Earthquakes break water systems first and restore them last, and this region's version of that problem is the longest in the country. Stored water, plus plain unscented bleach and purification tablets with amounts, is the difference between two weeks of inconvenience and two weeks of crisis.

Pick your number of days

Start with 3 days, then build toward two weeks and past it.

Want the math behind the amounts? Read how we calculate quantities.