The Go Bag That Stayed Home

I was driving back from a day trip to Seattle when a wildfire near my home in Spokane triggered a level 3 evacuation, immediate, leave now. I hadn't packed for an overnight. What I had was my three dogs, a car with half a tank of gas, and about two hours before I'd reach an area I wasn't allowed back into. I ended up at a hotel two hours outside the city. Three days later, I was still there.

The plan that assumes you are there

I had a go bag. Supplies, documents, everything you're supposed to have ready for exactly this situation. It was at the house, in the evacuation zone, exactly where I couldn't get to it. The plan wasn't bad. It just had one unexamined assumption built into it: that I'd be home when I needed it.

That's a more common failure than it sounds like. Most contingency plans, personal or organizational, get built around the version of the emergency where the right person is in position, has access to what they need, and is available to act. Real disruptions don't check anyone's calendar first. The plan that only works if you're standing next to it when disaster strikes isn't a contingency plan, it's a convenience plan that happens to look like one.

The information that does not move

The second thing that stood out was how little information moved. For days, official updates said only that the area was closed, not which streets, which structures, what the actual status was. I didn't know if my house still existed for longer than I want to admit. That's not a criticism of the response, disasters are chaotic and information is genuinely hard to produce fast. But it's a reminder that any plan built on the assumption that clear information will keep flowing is a plan that's already broken the moment the crisis gets bad enough to matter.

The business version

I've seen the business version of both of these failures more times than I can count. A business continuity plan that assumes the one person who knows the escalation path is reachable. A decision framework that assumes the systems needed to check it are the same systems currently down. A crisis communication plan that assumes leadership will have accurate information to share, when the accurate information is usually the last thing to arrive.

Build for the version where you are not there

The fix isn't a thicker binder or a more detailed plan. It's building for the version of the emergency where you're not in position, informed, or reachable, because that's usually the version that actually happens. What matters most can't live in one place, waiting for you to be there. It has to travel with you, or work without you, because the emergency isn't going to wait for you to be ready for it.