Ready Your Street: Introduction
Prepared Households, Connected Neighbors, Resilient Communities
Ready Your Street is a simple program to build emergency readiness and resilience in your neighborhood.
Background
The materials developed for the Ready Your Street program are based on well-established protocols and research, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Incident Command System (ICS), principles of Search and Rescue, the national Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program, research on resilience, the national Firewise program, and the massive Prepare Your Community content library.
These are the eight main concepts (and sources) behind the content:
A foundation of household resilience (FEMA, disaster case studies)
Forming small, resilient, and self-reliant neighborhood groups (CERT, research on the sociology of disasters, the Washington State Map Your Neighborhood Program, disaster case studies)
The importance of the first 60 minutes after a disaster (CERT, ICS)
The effectiveness of fun, easy, social gatherings (Brownie Wise and the Tupperware Corporation, Firewise, Portland NET)
Sharing resources among neighbors (CERT, Search and Rescue)
Redundancy of concepts (ICS, resilience research)
Redundancy of procedures (CERT, ICS)
Post-disaster signaling (maritime emergencies, roadside emergencies)
The Ready Your Street program combines these eight concepts to reduce barriers and increase the likelihood of success. RYS bolsters them with additional programmatic offerings: video, print, digital materials; training materials; a Creative Commons license for non-commercial customization; experience-derived wisdom about effective strategies and potential pitfalls; ongoing development milestones and support opportunities; a three-tiered development approach; and a connection pathway to link bottom-up to top-down readiness approaches.
Foundation of Preparedness
At the foundation of all emergency preparedness in a community are two key elements:
Household Readiness
Street Readiness
When we use the word street, we are referring to you and your closest 15 to 20 neighbors. In a rural area these might be homes within a mile or more of one another. In an urban area, a street might simply be the entire floor of an apartment building or all the apartments in a smaller building. In a suburban or semi-rural area, a street might be all the homes on a single block.
Without this foundation, a community is entirely dependent on a top-down approach, relying completely on the resources of federal, regional, state, county, and local agencies and authorities. These resources are often stretched thin, and in many areas they do not exist at all, so a completely top-down approach is likely to fail.
But by adopting a bottom-up approach, a community can meet any existing top-down resources in the middle, thereby increasing its resilience with a solid foundation.
Once you and your neighbors are prepared at the Street Level, the Ready Your Street program encourages collaboration among different streets to generate readiness of entire neighborhoods.
With a solid RYS foundation, communities work to prepare from the bottom up and the top down, increasing the likelihood of success.
Household Readiness
Household Readiness is about each person taking responsibility for their own basic preparedness in key categories, or what we call Community Lifelines, like food and water. These Community Lifelines are essential human needs. Emergency preparedness consists of making sure that these needs will be met during a disaster when your normal means of meeting them are disrupted.
Taking personal responsibility for preparing each of the Community Lifelines is a foundational element of community preparedness, because it is usually time-, cost-, and resource-prohibitive to burden a community with caring for individuals at this level. If each household can be responsible for its own basic survival for two weeks, then the community and its emergency readiness organization can provide key support in terms of more advanced medical care, information, transportation of resources and injured, and basic needs once household resources are depleted.
Launching Ready Your Street
The Ready Your Street program uses a combination of introductory information gatherings followed by annual refresher gatherings to prepare households and neighbors to respond effectively to a disaster. Through street-level training and coordination, the program builds community capacity so neighbors can handle immediate emergencies while waiting for outside help. This creates an interconnected network of streets that can respond quickly and reduce pressure on Disaster Hubs and emergency responders during emergencies.
The program’s strength lies in its community-driven approach—who knows a neighborhood better than the people who live there? They know the local hazards, who has unique skills, where the safest meeting spots are, and who needs special help. This local ownership ensures plans are practical and more likely to succeed when disaster strikes.
After a major disaster, you and your neighbors will rely on one another for up to 4 weeks. Ready Your Street will increase your resilience and equip you to better deal with the aftermath.
Here’s how to get started.
The Home Party
Throw a party! Invite 15 to 20 of your neighbors to your residence. The goal is for all of you to get to know one another better and launch Ready Your Street. Here's the party agenda:
Hand out the RYS booklet.
Choose a Street Meeting Place (relatively free of potential hazards given the types of disasters you might face).
Encourage people to prepare their Households for emergencies.
Choose a Captain and Co-Captain.
Choose four coordinators:
Complete the Residents Form.
Draw your street map.
Have fun!
More ideas: Make it a potluck. Play Disaster Trivia. Taste test emergency food samples. Play Two Truths and a Lie with your neighbors. Do a water filtering and treatment demo. Give out mini hand sanitizer party favors.
Practice
It is much easier to respond after an emergency if you have practiced the response steps.
With your neighbors, take time every year to work through the Four Response Actions across the Four Circles of Response.
Your goal is to complete all actions within 60 minutes.
Annual RYS Party
Get together with your neighbors once a year to check in, build relationships, update the forms and map, and introduce new neighbors to your RYS plan.
Check in
Build relationships.
Update forms and map.
Introduce new neighbors to your plan.
After a Disaster
When a disaster happens, you and your neighbors will begin a siple reiterative response process involving
60 first minutes
6 main roles
4 key actions
4 circles of response
1 meeting place
60 First Minutes
As the Incident Command System reminds us, the first hour after a disaster is going to be the most important in terms of saving lives and averting further problems. Ideally, you and your neighbors will be able to complete within that first hour all of the key actions in all four circles of response. Together, practice this first-hour scenario at least once a year.
4 Key Actions
The four key actions for neighbors to repeat throughout that first hour are as follows:
Checking: Look for damage, innjuries, hazards, and needs.
Responding: Take action. Treat injuries, get help, turn off the gas or water, extinguish the fire.
Noting: Write down what you see. Don’t rely on your memory.
Communicating: Post, share, or deliver the information.
4 Circles of Response
When a disaster strikes, you may feel frazzled and unable to focus. This is normal, but it makes it difficult to take action. For this reason, the RYS program breaks down what you need to do into what we call Circles. You complete one circle by performing the 4 Key Actions before moving on to the next as you walk from your household to the Meeting Place.
Circle 1: Your Household
The first Circle is your Household. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, you will want to secure whomever and whatever lies within that circle:
Checking: Check to make sure everyone who lives with you, including pets, is ok.
Noting: What is the disaster? Wildfire, flood, earthquake, landslide, blizzard, tornado, hurricane? Based on the disaster, ensure your safety within Circle 1. Do you need to turn off the water or the gas? Do you need to extinguish a small fire? Is your home structurally safe or do you need to evacuate?
Responding: If people (including yourself) or animals are injured, can you treat the injuries or do you need help?
Posting: Complete the Circle by posting your status in your front window (for a house) or on your front door (for an apartment) If you need help, post the SOS sign. If you are ok, post the Checkmark sign.
You have completed Circle 1.
Circle 2: Your Immediate Neighbors
Circle 2 is the immediate area around Circle 1. If you are in an apartment building, Circle 2 includes the units across from and to the left and right of your own. If you are in a home, it is immediately adjacent homes.
Checking: Check the units or homes adjacent to yours. On a piece of paper (because your memory may not be working right now), note whether your neighbors have posted the SOS or Checkmark signs or no signs at all. Quickly check on the SOS and no sign homes to see if anyone is there and what help they need.
Noting: On your piece of paper take notes about what you see.
Responding: Provide first aid or other help if you can.
Posting: Post brief notes about what you have observed on your Next Door Post to prevent duplication of effort.
Circle 2 is now complete.
Circle 3: Your Route to the Meeting Place
Checking: On your way to the Meeting Place, look for hazards.
Noting: On your piece of paper, take notes about the homes/units you pass and the signs that have been posted on homes/units and on Next Door Posts.
Responding: Address any immediate hazards, like gas leaks or water leaks.
Posting: Share your notes and observations with your other neighbors at the Meeting Place.
Circle 3 is now complete.
Circle 4: The Meeting Place
Streets select their own assembly points based on intimate local knowledge. Residents understand which areas flood during storms, where landslides might occur, and which locations are likely to remain accessible during different types of emergencies. This community-driven selection process ensures meeting spots are practical and appropriate for local conditions.
Regular drills and simulations embed response patterns into muscle memory, enabling quick transitions from chaos to coordinated action.
Checking: Check in with your neighbors at the Meeting Place.
Noting: Note who is missing and note any mentioned hazards that have not yet been resolved.
Responding: Break into four teams (see 6 Main Roles): Triage, Communications, Utilities, and Search. Each team should perform its assigned duties.
Posting: The Communications Coordinator should complete the Street Assessment Form and take it to (or communicate it via Ham radio with) the nearest Disaster Hub.
Circle 4 is now complete.
6 Main Roles
At your initial Ready Your Street party, you will select neighbors to fill these roles:
Street Captain
Leads meetings of residents and facilitates the initial RYS party.
Distributes RYS packets and establishes meeting places.
Keeps resident roster current and accessible.
Partners with co-captain to prevent leadership burnout.
Street Co-Captain
Assists captain with core functions.
Provides leadership continuity during captain transitions.
Collaborates in managing street programs
Supports specialized roles.
Triage Coordinator
Assesses and prioritizes medical needs at Meeting Place.
Coordinates with neighbors who have medical training.
Manages SOS/CHECK sign information collection.
Interfaces with Neighborhood medical resources.
Search Coordinator
Accounts for all residents.
Checks on vulnerable neighbors.
Looks for lost pets.
Utilities Coordinator
Manages utility shutdowns (gas, water, electric).
Assesses infrastructure damage.
Manages hazard identification and mitigation.
Interfaces with utility companies post-event.
Communications Coordinator
Operates radio equipment or coordinates human runners.
Manages information flow between Street and Neighborhood.
Maintains Resident spreadsheet and communication protocols.
Coordinates with adjacent streets and/or Disaster Hub.
Once you gather at the Meeting Place after a disaster, break into the four teams—Triage, Search, Utilities, and Communications—to continue necessary actions.
Tools
The RYS program provides essential tools that make rapid response possible:
The RYS Booklet, which explains the content in a simple way.
Help/OK door signs facilitate quick visual status checks of each household.
Damage assessment forms help trained volunteers document structural damage and injuries systematically.
Resident Forms, which record what you want to share about the ages of your household residents, your household's special needs, information about your pets, emergency-related trainings and certifications, and emergency-related tools and equipment.
Sustainable Leadership Structure
Maintaining engagement after the initial RYS party enthusiasm fades represents the program’s biggest ongoing challenge. Solo street captains frequently experience burnout, particularly on streets where neighbors do not naturally connect well or that lack strong existing social networks.
Successful long-term engagement relies on co-captain partnerships that distribute responsibilities and provide mutual support. High-performing streets connect with emerging neighborhoods through structured mentorship programs, sharing practical experience and proven strategies. Streets that successfully maintain preparedness typically integrate RYS activities into regular social events: annual potlucks, quarterly check-ins, and ongoing training sessions that keep neighbors engaged beyond formal emergency planning.
Comprehensive onboarding processes for new captains and structured handoff procedures when leadership changes help preserve institutional knowledge and maintain program continuity despite natural community transitions.
Multi-Layered Communication Systems
The program employs a multi-channel communication system that combines modern digital tools with reliable analog backups:
For normal operations and internet-available emergency situations, RYS uses Jotform—a secure, user-friendly platform that enables streets to collect and manage critical information including household needs assessments, skills inventories, and resource availability. This centrally managed system allows coordinators to access vital data during emergencies and quickly match community needs with available resources. Each participating street receives a dedicated listserv enabling real-time neighborhood coordination. Note: A digital record is not a requirement for participating in this program. The digital element exists solely to facilitate organization.
Understanding that disasters frequently disrupt digital infrastructure, the program maintains proven analog backup systems on paper and thumb drives.
Amateur radio (ham radio) networks operated by trained volunteers provide reliable communication with Disaster Hubs when other systems fail. Walkie-talkies (or Family Service Radios) keep neighbors connected during search and rescue and other local operations.
Human runners carry messages between locations when electronic communication is impossible.
Paper-based HELP/OK door cards provide immediate visual communication about household status.
Paper-based instruction handouts help people who might be in shock take basic immediate action.
The program continues addressing communication equity challenges, working to ensure residents with limited technological proficiency or physical constraints are not excluded from communication loops during emergencies.
Comprehensive Infrastructure Mapping
During an RYS meeting, the residents of a street collaboratively identify critical local infrastructure including water shut-off valves, propane tanks, electrical junctions, and other utilities that require emergency management and mark these on a map. Include commonly overlooked hazards such as subsurface gas lines, electrical junction boxes, and property-specific features like water towers, well houses, or private water systems that require specialized knowledge to manage safely.
The WASH (Water Hygiene and Sanitation) Team assists neighborhoods in identifying street water meters and understanding utility systems. Streets create both digital maps stored in secure repositories and physical copies distributed to every household, ensuring critical information remains accessible even when technology systems fail.
The program emphasizes that simply knowing hazard locations is insufficient—neighbors must develop practical capacity to safely manage these risks during emergencies. This includes hands-on training for utility shutoffs, understanding evacuation procedures, and recognizing which situations require professional intervention versus those manageable by trained community members.
Adaptive Learning and Program Evolution
A key program insight recognizes that effective engagement doesn’t always look the same across different communities. Although some streets maintain preparedness through visible activities like regular meetings and training events, others sustain readiness through informal networks and independent planning that may be less obvious but equally effective. The program is developing alternative engagement strategies to support these quieter but still successful approaches.
Current data management efforts focus on cleaning and updating tracking information to better distinguish between streets that are truly prepared and those that are simply enrolled in the program. Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping helps identify patterns across the community and prioritize outreach to vulnerable areas based on risk factors and current preparedness levels.
The program’s current focus involves strengthening connections among three critical levels:
Individual household preparedness (emergency kits, family plans)
Street-level coordination (neighbor-to-neighbor response)
Disaster Hub integration (connection with broader emergency systems). The goal is creating streets capable of handling immediate response needs independently while connecting seamlessly with Disaster Hubs for situations requiring additional resources or expertise.
Strategic Scaling and Prioritization
RYS prioritizes community-driven engagement over attempting to impose preparedness on reluctant neighborhoods. Experience demonstrates that voluntary participation leads to significantly better long-term commitment and program success. Robust outreach through educational workshops, community events, and regular public engagement encourages streets to reach out proactively.
The program adapts its approach to accommodate different community dynamics and engagement preferences. Some streets enthusiastically adopt comprehensive preparedness activities including regular social gatherings and extensive training programs. Others maintain effective preparedness through minimal but consistent touchpoints such as annual email updates that keep emergency plans current without requiring extensive meeting participation. Any level of preparation provides meaningful benefits over no preparation at all.
A data-driven (geospatial analysis) approach ensures resources target areas where preparedness improvements can provide maximum community benefit. The analysis considers geographic risk factors, population density, and existing community capacity.
Vision for Community-Wide Resilience
The program works toward establishing an interconnected response system across all regions of a community. In this vision, prepared streets handle immediate emergency needs independently while maintaining effective connections with Disaster Hubs for situations requiring additional resources, specialized expertise, or coordination across multiple neighborhoods.
This distributed resilience approach embodies the principle of neighbors helping neighbors first, supported by broader emergency management systems when needed. By building genuine community capacity at the street level, the program reduces pressure on centralized disaster response resources and ensures no community faces emergencies in isolation.
The RYS program continues evolving based on implementation experience, ongoing community feedback, and the practical realities of maintaining emergency preparedness over time. This adaptive approach ensures the program remains relevant and effective as community needs and conditions change.