The Most Important Question in Disaster Preparedness
I was wrapping up a community training in Phoenix when a man in the back row raised his hand and asked the one question I've heard at nearly every presentation I've ever given.
"When the wildfire gets close, who's in charge of telling us what to do?"
He was looking for a name. An agency. A badge. He wanted someone to hand him a plan and tell him to follow it. I understood the impulse completely. And I had to give him an answer that changed his whole afternoon.
The Question Behind the Question
The most important question in disaster preparedness isn't "what do I pack?" or "where do I go?" It's this: who is in charge of your response?
The answer is you. It has always been you.
I don't say that to scare you, and I definitely don't say it to assign blame. You know I don't do doom here. I say it because the moment you accept that truth, everything about how you prepare changes completely.
The fire department responding to a wildfire near your neighborhood is in charge of fighting that fire. The Red Cross shelter is in charge of operating that facility. FEMA is in charge of distributing recovery funds. None of them are in charge of your response. That's yours. And that's actually the best news you're going to hear today.
Why the Alphabet Soup Can't Save You
I've spent two decades working inside the system most people are waiting on to rescue them. I've seen the gap between what agencies promise and what street-level reality delivers up close. It isn't a gap born from bad intentions. It's a structural problem.
Every agency in that alphabet soup — FEMA, DHS, local OES, the Red Cross — is designed to manage populations at scale. They're optimizing for thousands of people at once. You are one household. Your specific medical needs, your pets, your elderly neighbor, your car with the broken trunk latch — none of that fits into a mass response framework.
When people surrender their response to those systems, they surrender their options. They wait for instructions that come late. They queue for resources that run out. They end up reactive in a situation that rewards nothing more than being proactive.
Options Are the Whole Game
This is exactly why I built the 5-Pocket Method around one core principle: maximize your options at every decision point.
Whether you're evacuating, sheltering in place, or locking down, your job is the same. Equip yourself with enough capability to stay in charge of what happens next. That means knowing your anchor points before you need them. It means carrying what you actually need instead of filing away what someone told you to have. It means treating your preparation as a living system, not a binder on a shelf.
Most people don't lose control during disasters because they're unprepared in spirit. They lose control because they run out of options. The road is closed and they don't know another route. The shelter is full and they don't know a contact. The power is out and they don't have a backup communication plan.
Every option you build in advance is a decision you get to make instead of absorb.
You Are the Plan
The man in Phoenix wasn't wrong to ask who's in charge. It's the right question. He just hadn't considered that the answer could be him.
By the end of that session, he had identified two anchor points, one evacuation route he'd never used, and a go-bag checklist that fit his actual life. He left with options. That's what the 5-Pocket Method does — it doesn't replace the agencies or the systems. It makes sure you're never fully dependent on them.
Stop waiting for someone with a badge to hand you a plan. Build yours now. The next post breaks down exactly how the 5-Pocket Method gives you the options you need before you ever need them.
But it goes far more than that! Check out my full podcast on this topic - https://youtu.be/LUKl13xO8KM