Personal Preparedness and Mitigation

We have listed all our documents related to personal preparedness and mitigation on this page. It concenrates links found on a variety of pages throughout the website. Use it as a quick reference.

The difference between preparedness and mitigation confuses a lot of people. Mitigation is action you take to reduce the harm you'll suffer when something bad happens. Wearing a seatbelt is mitigation. Preparedness is action you take to better respond. Learning CPR is preparedness, so is preparing an emergency supply kit.

Personal Preparedness

Supply Kits
Family Disaster Supplies Kit (PDF)
Pet Preparedness (PDF)
Car Kits (PDF)
Work/School Kits (PDF)
Storing Emergency Water (PDF)

Family Plans
How to create a family reunion plan (pdf)
How to create a family communications plan (pdf)

Personal Mitigation

Home Retrofit
One of Seattle Project Impact's programs, Regional Home Retrofit, is the structural strengthening of older wood-frame houses.  This program is tied to an expedited permit, training for homeowners (for those who want to complete the retrofit themselves or consumer information when hiring one of the trained contractors), and financing all tied to the Home Retrofit Standards & Guidelines.  Below is the Home Earthquake Retrofit Handbook in which these guidelines and step-by-step retrofit process is described.  For information on the homeowner classes, click here.  The Handbook and planset with detail drawings are provided to all attendees.  

The Home Retrofit process is divided into 3 Chapters below.  To view the pdf files, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader available here.  (Note: some of the following pdf files are over 1 megabyte in size, thus visitors on an older modem may want to exercise caution.) 

EARTHQUAKE HOME RETROFIT HANDBOOK

• Chapter 1 - Home Retrofit Overview
• Chapter 2 - Guide to Completing the Home Assessment Checklist  (1.33M)
• Chapter 3 - Guide to Completing and Earthquake Retrofit Plan for Wood Frame Residential Buildings  (1.5M)
  • Appendices for Chapter 3