Family Earthquake Plan: Drop, Cover, Hold On — and the Bed-Kit Most Families Forget

An earthquake plan for a family has four parts, and none of them is a doorway: a house where the heavy things are bolted down, a pair of sturdy shoes and a flashlight tied to every bed, a drill your kids have done until it is boring, and an out-of-state contact everyone can text. Cut feet from broken glass are among the most common earthquake injuries — the shoes matter more than the kit.

Everything below follows the official guidance of Ready.gov, the American Red Cross and the USGS, and the sources are listed at the end. If you only do one thing this month, register your household for the Great ShakeOut drill on October 15, 2026 and practise once. It takes sixty seconds.

First, unlearn the doorway

The advice most adults grew up with — stand in a doorway — is wrong for modern houses, and Ready.gov now says so explicitly: stay inside, do not run outside, avoid doorways. A doorway is no stronger than the rest of the frame, the door itself swings and breaks fingers, and standing up is exactly what you should not be doing while the floor is moving.

The protocol every US agency agrees on is Drop, Cover, and Hold On:

1. Drop where you are onto hands and knees, before the shaking knocks you down.
2. Cover your head and neck with one arm and hand. If a sturdy table or desk is within reach, crawl under it. If not, crawl to an interior wall away from windows, stay on your knees and bend over to protect your organs.
3. Hold on until the shaking stops — to the table leg if you are under one, so you move with it; to your head and neck with both arms if you are not.

Three situations Ready.gov addresses that most guides skip: in bed, turn face down and cover your head and neck with a pillow rather than trying to get up; in a car, pull over, stop and set the parking brake; outdoors, stay outdoors and move away from buildings, trees, streetlights and power lines. If you use a wheelchair, lock the wheels, bend over and cover your head; if you use a cane, sit on the nearest chair or bed and cover your head with both hands.

Secure the house: the weekend job that prevents most injuries

The Red Cross suggests a simple exercise: imagine the room picked up and shaken side to side. Everything that would fall is what injures people. The Ready.gov list of what to secure: bookcases, refrigerators, water heaters, televisions, and anything hanging on a wall. Straps, L-brackets, latches and museum putty are cheap and take an afternoon.

• Move heavy and breakable objects to low shelves. Nothing heavy above a bed or a sofa.
• Strap the water heater to wall studs — it is both a fire risk (gas line) and, once the mains are off, your largest store of drinkable water.
• Fit latches on kitchen cabinets so the contents do not become projectiles.
• Know where the gas shut-off is and keep a wrench next to it. Turn gas off only if you smell it or hear it leaking; you will need the utility to turn it back on.

Renters can do all of this with removable straps and putty. If you own in an earthquake-prone area, the Red Cross advice is to have the building evaluated for structural retrofits — and to check your insurance: a standard homeowner’s policy does not cover earthquake damage (Ready.gov). Separate earthquake policies exist and most people find out they needed one afterwards.

Three kits, not one: the bed-kit is the one you are missing

The Red Cross earthquake guidance names three kits, and the third is specific to this hazard:

• Go-Kit — at least 3 days of supplies you can carry, including chargers and batteries for phones and medical devices.
• Stay-at-Home Kit — at least 2 weeks of supplies, because after a major earthquake the roads, not the house, are usually the problem.
• Bed-Kit — a bag tied to each bed frame with sturdy shoes, a flashlight and a whistle. Earthquakes at night mean walking across broken glass in the dark; this is why cut feet are so common, and why the bed-kit prevents more injuries per dollar than anything else on this page.

Ready.gov adds a fire extinguisher to the earthquake kit — broken gas lines and fallen candles start fires when the fire department cannot get through. For the main kit, we compared eight pre-built bags in our 72-hour emergency kit review and priced the eight items that carry the cost in what a 72-hour kit actually costs. Two things are worth spending on for earthquakes specifically: a battery lantern you can set down (not a candle) and a hand-crank radio, because the mobile network is the first thing to saturate.

The communication plan: one contact, out of state

Ready.gov’s instruction is precise: a family emergency communications plan with an out-of-state contact and a meeting place if you are separated. Local lines and towers are overloaded or down after a quake; a text to a relative two states away often gets through when a call across town does not. Every member of the household, including children, should have that number written down — not only in a phone with a dying battery.

Decide two meeting points now: one just outside the home (the mailbox, the neighbour’s driveway) and one outside the neighbourhood in case you cannot get back. If your children are at school, find out the school’s release policy before the drill, not after the earthquake. Our family emergency plan guide covers the full plan; this section is the earthquake-specific part.

Practise until it is boring: the Great ShakeOut

The reason drills matter is in the ShakeOut’s own explanation: strong shaking moves the floor several feet per second, and the first jolt is the only warning you get. People who have practised drop before they think; people who have not stand up and look around, which is when things fall on them. The Great ShakeOut is the annual, free, one-minute drill — October 15, 2026 at 10:15 a.m. local time, with more than 19 million US participants registered last year. Register the household, do the drill at home, and do it again once in the spring.

With children, the Red Cross approach is to practise, not to frighten: make it a game of finding the best cover in each room, and let them show a grandparent how it is done. Our guide on teaching kids emergency preparedness has more on the tone.

Early warning: seconds, if you live in the West

The USGS ShakeAlert system delivers earthquake early warnings to phones in California, Oregon and Washington — more than 50 million residents. It gives seconds, not minutes, but seconds are enough to drop and cover before the strong shaking arrives. On most Android phones it is built in; elsewhere, the USGS lists the apps that carry it. Outside the three states there is no public early-warning system yet, which is one more reason the drill has to be reflex.

After the shaking: the part that injures people who did everything right

Ready.gov and the Red Cross both stress that the danger continues after the main shock:

• Expect aftershocks and be ready to Drop, Cover and Hold On again, sometimes for days.
• If the building is damaged, get out and move away from it; do not go back into damaged buildings.
• If you are trapped, text rather than call, bang on a pipe or wall, and use the whistle from the bed-kit instead of shouting — shouting fills your lungs with dust.
• Check for gas smell; if present, leave and turn it off outside. Avoid downed power lines.
• If you are on the coast and the shaking was long or strong, go inland or uphill immediately without waiting for an official tsunami warning.
• Put the shoes on before you take a single step. Then the flashlight. Then everything else.

What this article does not cover

Structural retrofitting (foundation bolting, cripple-wall bracing, soft-storey reinforcement) is engineering work with state programmes and grants behind it; it is not a weekend project and we do not pretend otherwise. If you live in a high-risk zone, the ShakeOut regional pages and your state’s emergency management office list the local programmes. This checklist is the part every household can do this month for under a hundred dollars.

Dan Lockland

Dan Lockland is a preparedness instructor and survival skills educator with over 15 years of hands-on experience. He shares practical, no-nonsense guidance on emergency preparedness, self-reliance, and sustainable living at PreparingWithDan.com.