TREMR

Here's the quiet truth about earthquakes: the shaking itself is the one phase you can't control. Everything before it — the plan, the secured bookshelf, the documents in a waterproof bag, the drill your kids have practiced twice — that's all yours. Preparedness isn't about fear. It's about making decisions now, calmly, so you don't have to make them later, in the dark, with the floor moving.

This guide completes our trilogy: what to do during the shaking and what to do after it stops. This is the first chapter — the weeks and months before, the unglamorous work that matters most.

Make a family emergency plan

Start with the conversation, not the shopping. Sit down with everyone in your household and decide:

• Two meeting points: one right outside your home (a neighbor's driveway, a specific tree) for a sudden evacuation, and one outside your neighborhood (a library, a school, a relative's house) in case the area is closed off.
• An out-of-area contact: one person outside the quake zone everyone checks in with. After a big quake, local calls often fail while long-distance texts go through. Our after-earthquake guide explains why texting beats calling.
• How the kids get home: know your school's emergency pickup policy and make sure every caregiver knows it. Write it down — don't trust memory under stress.
• Where the go-bags are and who's responsible for grabbing what — including the leash, the carrier, and the pet food if you have animals.

Put the plan on paper — one page on the fridge beats a perfect plan nobody can find. Include phone numbers (not just names in a phone that might be dead), the meeting points, and the out-of-area contact. Review it once a year; kids grow, numbers change, caregivers rotate.

Secure your home: the furniture is the hazard

In regions with modern building codes, buildings are designed to stay standing — it's the unsecured contents that injure people. Bookcases, TVs, dressers, water heaters, and anything heavy on a high shelf become projectiles when the floor moves. Securing them is the highest-return preparedness work there is, and most of it takes an afternoon.

• Anchor tall furniture to wall studs with L-brackets or furniture straps: bookcases, dressers, wardrobes, filing cabinets. Anything taller than it is wide is a tipping risk.
• Strap the water heater to the wall with two metal straps — a toppled heater can rupture gas and water lines at the same time.
• Latch the cabinets, especially in the kitchen. Child-safety latches work fine; the goal is keeping dishes and cans inside during shaking.
• Move heavy items to low shelves and light items up high. That cast-iron skillet collection does not belong above your head.
• Hang frames and mirrors with closed hooks instead of open nails, and keep heavy frames away from beds and couches.
• Secure the TV with a strap or wall mount — flat-screens are top-heavy and tip forward easily.

Walk through each room and look up: what's above the bed, above the couch, above the crib? If it would hurt falling from that height, move it or secure it. This one honest walkthrough prevents more injuries than almost anything else on this list.

Learn your shutoffs: gas, water, power

After a quake, you may need to kill your utilities fast — and you do not want to be learning where the valves are for the first time with a gas smell in the air.

• Gas: find the shutoff valve on the pipe where the line enters your house (usually at the meter). It turns a quarter-turn with a wrench — keep a dedicated wrench tied to or near the meter. Only shut it off if you smell gas, hear hissing, or see damage to the line. And once it's off, leave it off: only the gas company should turn it back on.
• Water: know where the main shutoff is (near where the line enters the house, or at the street meter). You'll need it if pipes rupture.
• Electricity: know where the breaker panel is and how to flip the main breaker — but only touch it if it's dry and you can reach it without standing in water.

Label everything with a tag or paint marker, and make sure every adult in the household — not just you — knows where they are and how they work. A shutoff only one person knows about is barely a shutoff at all.

Protect your documents — and check your insurance

The unglamorous paperwork matters enormously when you're filing claims or proving who you are after a disaster:

• Copies of the essentials — IDs, passports, insurance policies, deeds or leases, medical prescriptions, bank account numbers — in a waterproof bag in your go-bag, and scanned to secure cloud storage.
• Photo inventory of your home: walk through every room once a year and photograph or video everything, closets and drawers included. Insurance adjusters need "before" evidence, and memory is a terrible inventory.
• Emergency cash in small bills. ATMs and card readers don't work without power, and they stay down longer than you'd think.

Sign up for earthquake early warning

You can't predict earthquakes, but in several regions you can get seconds of warning before the strong shaking arrives — enough to drop, cover, and hold on, or to step away from a stove. These systems detect the fast, weak P-waves and broadcast an alert ahead of the slower, damaging S-waves.

• US West Coast: ShakeAlert, operated by the USGS with university partners, covers California, Oregon, and Washington. Alerts arrive through Wireless Emergency Alerts on your phone — no app required — and through apps like MyShake. Check that emergency alerts are enabled in your phone's notification settings.
• Japan: the Japan Meteorological Agency's Earthquake Early Warning goes out via TV, radio, and mobile phone alerts (the distinctive chime). If you live in Japan, make sure your phone can receive them — most do by default.
• Mexico, Taiwan, and others operate their own systems; check your national geological or meteorological agency for what's available where you live.

When an alert sounds, act immediately — don't wait to feel shaking or check whether it's real. Seconds are the whole point. Our deep dive on early warning systems explains how they work and what their limits are.

Practice: drills make it automatic

Knowing "drop, cover, and hold on" intellectually and doing it in the first three seconds of real shaking are different skills. The bridge between them is practice.

• Join the Great ShakeOut — held every third Thursday of October, it's the world's largest earthquake drill, with millions of participants. Schools, workplaces, and families practice the same move at the same time.
• Run a home drill twice a year: everyone practices drop, cover, and hold on, then walks the evacuation route to your outside meeting point. Time it. Fix what was confusing.
• Practice the variations: what do you do in bed (stay, cover your head with a pillow), in the car (pull over, stay inside), in a store (away from shelves, cover your head)? Our during-earthquake guide covers every scenario — rehearse the ones that apply to your life.

For kids, drills should be matter-of-fact, not scary. Frame it like a fire drill: a thing competent people practice. Kids who have drilled stay calmer and move faster — and calm, fast kids are safer kids.

Renters, older adults, and pets

Renters: you can still do most of this. Furniture straps, cabinet latches, and low shelves don't require structural changes. Ask your landlord about water heater straps and gas shutoff access — in many places these are the owner's responsibility. Renters insurance is cheap and covers your belongings; the building itself is the landlord's problem.

Older adults and people with disabilities: build a personal support network — two or three people who agree to check on you after a quake. Keep a week of medications (not three days), spare glasses, hearing-aid batteries, and any mobility aids somewhere reachable from your bed. If you use a wheelchair or walker, practice the drop-cover-hold-on adaptation that works for you: lock the wheels, cover your head and neck.

Pets: keep carriers, a leash, a few days of food, and vaccination records by the door — ideally with your go-bag. Make sure ID tags and microchip registrations are current; frightened animals bolt through broken fences and doors.

Your one-weekend preparedness sprint

If this list feels long, here's the compressed version. One weekend, roughly four hours total:

• Saturday morning (1 hour): the family meeting. Meeting points, out-of-area contact, school pickup plan, one page on the fridge.
• Saturday afternoon (2 hours): the walkthrough. Anchor the two tallest bookcases, strap the water heater, latch the kitchen cabinets, move heavy items to low shelves.
• Sunday morning (30 min): the shutoffs. Find gas, water, and power; label them; show every adult.
• Sunday afternoon (30 min): the paperwork. Photograph every room, scan the essential documents, check your insurance policy's earthquake exclusion.

Pair it with our 72-hour kit guide to build your supplies in the same weekend, and you'll have the essentials covered — not through fear, but through one focused weekend.

Preparation is the only phase of an earthquake you get to do calmly. Use that advantage. And when you've done the work above, read what to do during the shaking and what to do after — so the whole household knows the full sequence, before it matters.