When the House Needs to Hold: Water, Power, and Home

Naming it

The house is the one system you actually run.

Wanting the lights to stay on and the taps to run clean is not worry for its own sake. Those systems are the floor everything else in a household stands on, and it is reasonable to want that floor solid.

The grid, the water plant, and the weather are outside your reach. What is stored in your closet, how one room stays warm, and how quickly you can answer an outage are inside it. Everything below works on the inside of that line.

The bounded list

What could actually reach your household.

Not predictions. Just the forms this pressure takes when it lands, so you can match your situation to the right guide.

The power goes out for hours, or for days after a storm.
A boil-water advisory arrives and the tap is suddenly a question.
A heat wave or cold snap makes one room the only comfortable room.
Pipes freeze, or a leak turns into water where it should not be.
A shutoff notice arrives while the budget is already tight.
A storm leaves the roof, windows, or siding needing fast attention.

Start with one thing

Store three days of water.

One gallon per person per day

Water is the supply a household misses first and can store most cheaply. Three days at one gallon per person per day covers most outages and every boil-water advisory, and the Water section shows exactly how to store it.

Start with the Water section →

The guides

Prepare, navigate, recover.

Prepare

Water

Storing, treating, and resupplying clean water for the household.

Open the section →

Energy

Backup power, safe heat, lighting, and getting through outages well.

Open the section →

Shelter and home

Making the house itself safer, tighter, and ready for its climate.

Open the section →

Water checklist

Every water item, checkable and saveable to your dashboard.

Open the checklist →

Winter seasonal checklist

The pipes, heat, and weatherization work that beats the first freeze.

Open the checklist →

Summer seasonal checklist

Cooling, storm season, and the maintenance that beats the heat.

Open the checklist →

Navigate

Power outage

What to do before, during, and after the lights go out.

Read the guide →

Water contamination

Boil-water advisories and contamination events, handled calmly.

Read the guide →

Utility shutoff

When the notice is about the bill, not the grid. Plans and protections.

Read the guide →

Power outage checklist

The outage steps as a checklist, phase by phase.

Open the checklist →

Winter outage checklist

The cold-weather version, where heat is the first problem to solve.

Open the checklist →

Recover

Physical recovery

Repairs, contractors, and putting the house back in order after damage.

Start here →

Recovery timelines

What the first week, month, and season of recovery usually look like.

See the timelines →

Your area

Your risks are local.

The hazards that reach your house depend on your ZIP code, and so do the utilities and agencies that answer them.

Check your local risks

Enter your ZIP for current conditions, hazards, and resources for your county.

Open the local dashboard →

Your state's resources

Emergency management, utility assistance, and state programs, kept current on every state page.

Browse the states →

Enough for now

You are prepared enough when...

You store one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days.
You can light one room and keep it warm, safely and without grid power, for a night.
You know where your main water shutoff and electrical panel are, and how to use them.
A flashlight, a charged power bank, and a battery radio live where anyone can find them in the dark.

Look at this again when the season changes. The seasonal checklists above exist for exactly that moment.