Disaster Preparedness for Assisted Living & Memory Care: A Family Checklist

Your phone buzzes with an evacuation alert. The power goes out with no service restoration window in sight, or the news starts pairing the word "hazmat" with your county's name.

Whatever the disaster, if you have a Loved One in Assisted Living or Memory Care, you land on the same question: Do I even know what their Community's plan is?

For most families, the honest answer is no, and the data on Assisted Living Residents specifically (not nursing home Residents) makes the case for finding out now.

A study of a matched cohort of 25,130 Florida Assisted Living Residents exposed to Hurricane Irma found that evacuating a Community was associated with 16% higher odds of an emergency room visit and 51% higher odds of a nursing home placement within 30 days, compared to Residents whose Communities sheltered in place, with no significant difference in mortality between the two groups (Brown University School of Public Health, May 2024, reporting on a JAMA Network Open study). This isn't a rare-event problem: the U.S. saw roughly three times as many extreme weather and climate events in 2021 as it did 15 years earlier (National Institute on Aging, 2022).

None of this is meant to alarm you, only to make the case: preparation for a Loved One in Assisted Living or Memory Care shouldn't start the night before a storm makes landfall. As the old adage goes, "preparation is the mother of success," and that means getting ready well before a disaster can strike, then updating that plan occasionally as the months and years roll by.

The Disaster-Ready Folder: A Checklist That Works for Any Disaster

Hurricanes, wildfires, ice storms, extended power outages, hazmat evacuations: the specific emergency looks different depending on where your Loved One lives, but the information you need ready is largely the same. When I toured more than 30 Communities across two states for my own parents, disaster planning wasn't a question I thought to ask on tour day, and most families don't either. But now that you have Petunia, it's worth asking now! Here's what you should ask the Community for:

1. A copy of the Community's written emergency plan. Every Assisted Living and Memory Care Community is required by its state to have one, though the specifics vary widely. Ask directly: Under what conditions do they evacuate versus shelter in place? Where do Residents go if they evacuate? How and when will you be contacted? Get this in writing if you can, not just a verbal summary.
2. A current medication list. Names, dosages, prescribing physician, and pharmacy, updated any time something changes. If your Loved One needs to be cared for by someone unfamiliar with their routine, even briefly, this list is what keeps that transition safe.
3. Key documents, copied and accessible. Power of attorney, healthcare proxy or advance directive, Medicare and supplemental insurance cards, physician contact information, and a photo ID. Keep both a physical copy somewhere you can grab quickly and a digital copy you can access from your phone.
4. A communication plan with the Community. Know who calls you, and confirm they have more than one number on file for you. If you have siblings or other Family Team members involved, designate one point of contact so the Community isn't managing five separate phone calls during an emergency.
5. A recent photo of your Loved One. In a large-scale evacuation, Residents can be separated from their Community's staff. A current photo helps if you ever need to help locate them through a shelter or agency. Have both printed and digital copies.
6. Confirmation of how the Community handles backup power and medical equipment. If your Loved One relies on oxygen, refrigerated medication, or other powered equipment, ask specifically how the Community handles that during an outage, not just generally.
7. A note on how often the Community actually drills. A plan on paper and a plan the staff has practiced are two different things. It's a fair question to ask, and a well-run Community will have a real answer.

Know Your Region: Quick Notes by Disaster Type

• Hurricanes and coastal flooding: Ask whether the Community sits in a flood zone, what triggers their evacuation decision, and how much lead time they typically need.
• Wildfires: Ask about their evacuation tier system and how they handle smoke and air quality for Residents with respiratory conditions.
• Winter storms and extreme cold: Ask how the Community heats the building without grid power and for how long, and what their plan is if roads become impassable for staff.
• Extended power outages (any region): Ask about generator capacity, and confirm what it actually covers: medical refrigeration, elevators, and climate control included.
• Hazmat or localized emergencies (any region): Ask what their shelter-in-place protocol looks like and how they'll notify you if the building is sealed rather than evacuated.

For Communities: What Families Are Actually Looking For

Most Assisted Living and Memory Care Communities are already required to have a written emergency preparedness plan on file with their state. Minnesota, Colorado, and Virginia, among others, all mandate this as a condition of licensure, and states continue to update these requirements. Texas is a recent example: House Bill 3595 required every licensed Assisted Living Community in the state to adopt and implement a written emergency preparedness and contingency operations plan by January 1, 2026 (Texas Assisted Living Association; Texas Health and Human Services Commission).

Meeting the regulatory minimum and earning a family's trust are not the same thing, and a few things consistently separate the two:

• Share the plan before you're asked. Families rarely think to request it during a tour (unless they're using Petunia), and most won't ask again after move-in. Building it into new-resident onboarding, rather than waiting for a request, signals confidence rather than compliance.
• Be specific about evacuate-versus-shelter criteria. Research on Assisted Living Residents during Hurricane Irma found that evacuation was linked to worse short-term health outcomes than sheltering in place. That doesn't mean evacuation is the wrong call; it means the decision carries real tradeoffs, and families benefit from understanding the reasoning behind it, not just knowing that a plan exists. Consult your own legal team on how much of that reasoning to share.
• Make the communication tree visible. Families want to know, in advance, who calls them and how, not learn it for the first time during an actual emergency.
• Treat drills as a family-facing credential, not just a compliance task. A Community that can say "we ran a full drill last quarter" is answering a question families are increasingly likely to ask.

Before the Alert Comes

A Community's emergency plan isn't paperwork filed away for a state inspector. It's part of what a family is looking for: the trust and assurance that someone has already thought through the worst day, not just the ordinary ones. How well your Community shares this information can go a long way after a family has completed the tour, while you're still building value and trust.

For families, that same openness is what turns a tour into a decision you can trust. When a Community shares how it protects Residents on the worst days, it says as much about their care as anything else you'll see on a visit.