The Southeast & Gulf Coast emergency checklist

Covers: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia

This is an emergency checklist for Southeast and Gulf Coast households. Hurricane season gives this region something rare: a disaster you can see coming. But the same checklist covers the ones you can't, from flash floods to a failed water system, because the needs are the same: water, food, light, information, and a way out. Start with the 3-day list. For a family of four, that begins with 18 gallons of water, calculated for this region and your household.

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Evacuate or shelter in place?

If local officials order evacuation for your zone, go. That decision belongs to them, not to a website, and the people who wait for the storm to convince them drive into the traffic everyone remembers. What this checklist does is make either answer ready before the question is asked: supplies staged for sheltering, and a go-bag already packed for leaving. Two things to do now, in the calm: look up your evacuation zone on your county's emergency site, and pick the inland place you'd go, whether that's family or a motel town three hours up the interstate. A plan made in May takes ten minutes. The same plan made during a hurricane warning takes the worst weekend of your year.

What does the week before landfall look like?

A watch means possible within 48 hours; a warning means expected within 36. If your supplies exist before the watch, the week is chores: water topped off, tank filled, plywood up, freezer turned down, documents and medications into the go-bag. If they don't, the week is lines. Every hurricane veteran's story about empty shelves is a story about the difference between those two weeks. This checklist exists so you're in the first one.

How much water and food per person?

Storm aftermath is measured in weeks, not days, when Harvey-class flooding or Ian-class surge hits. The baseline is one gallon of water per person, per day, raised by half because Gulf summers are dangerous in an outage. Four people for three days is 18 gallons. But the 10-day list is the one hurricane veterans build toward, and for four people that means water in the tens of gallons and food you can eat without power: a manual can opener, canned protein, and calories that don't need a working kitchen. Your checklist gives the exact amounts for each duration, plus plain unscented bleach and purification tablets, because boil-water notices follow surge and flood almost every time.

What goes in the go-bag?

One bag per person, packed before the season, staged where you can grab it. Documents in a waterproof folder, cash in small bills because card readers die with the power, medications, and copies of the insurance you'll be calling about. The full list with quantities is the Gulf Coast go-bag checklist. If you're in an evacuation zone, the go-bag is not the backup plan. It's the plan.

What do you board up, and when?

Pre-cut plywood, measured and drilled in May, goes up in an afternoon. Bought during a watch, it doesn't exist, because every sheet in three counties sold on the first day. The checklist includes board-up hardware, tarps for the roof afterward, and sandbags where surge and street flooding meet. Photograph your home before the storm, room by room. The insurance claim you file later is built from those pictures.

What about after the storm?

The days after a hurricane hurt more people than the storm itself. Floodwater hides cuts, sewage, and downed lines, so waterproof boots and heavy gloves are on your checklist. Cleanup means tarps, a way to shut off gas and water, and patience with a grid that comes back in patches. If you run a generator while you wait, place it outdoors and far from windows. Never run a generator, grill, or camp stove indoors. Carbon monoxide after the storm kills people the storm didn't.

Pick your number of days

Start with 3 days, then build toward 10. Each list adds to the one before it.

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