Bug-in planning
When Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, roughly 150,000–200,000 people stayed in the New Orleans area rather than evacuating. Many stayed by choice, believing their homes offered sufficient protection; others lacked transportation or money. Of those who died from drowning — 33% of Katrina's Louisiana death toll — most were found at home, trapped by rising floodwater they couldn't escape. The lesson is not that staying is always wrong. It is that "bug in" requires the same level of deliberate planning as evacuation — and a clear threshold for when to flip the decision.
When staying is the right call
Staying put is often the safer choice for events that are short to medium duration, don't threaten the structure itself, and don't require specialized outside resources. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s guidance notes that evacuation increases exposure risk when the hazard is widespread and movement routes pass through it.
Stay when:
- The threat is a short-duration power outage (72 hours or less) with adequate supplies at home
- Severe weather makes road travel more dangerous than shelter — blizzards, ice, active hurricane-force winds
- Civil disorder is localized to a zone you don't need to cross
- A household member has a medical condition that makes movement dangerous
- Your home is structurally sound and not in a mandatory evacuation zone
Leave when:
- A mandatory evacuation order is issued for your zone
- Floodwater is rising toward or into the structure
- A utility failure (natural gas leak, extended infrastructure loss) makes the structure uninhabitable
- Security cannot be maintained against a direct threat
- Medical needs cannot be met at home
- Supply depth drops to less than 72 hours remaining
Field note
Write your leave triggers on a card taped to the inside of a cabinet before any event. "I will leave if [X]" decided in advance resists the bias toward staying that most people feel under stress. In the moment, every hour of uncertainty feels like a reason to wait one more hour.
Supply depth by duration
The practical limit on how long you can stay is determined by your least-stocked critical resource. Water is usually the first constraint.
| Duration | Water per person | Food calories per person | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72-hour baseline | 3 gallons (11 L) | 6,000–7,500 | Minimum recommended by Red Cross |
| 2-week target | 14 gallons (53 L) | 28,000–35,000 | Extended outage benchmark |
| 30-day depth | 30 gallons (113 L) | 60,000–75,000 | Full disruption planning level |
These are per-person figures. A household of four at 30-day depth needs 120 gallons (454 L) of water and roughly 300,000 calories of food — manageable if planned and stored in advance, impossible to acquire after an event begins.
The water figure assumes drinking and basic hygiene only. Cooking and sanitation increase consumption; plan at 2 gallons (7.6 L) per person per day for a more realistic margin.
Home hardening for extended stay
Bugging in without hardening your home's vulnerabilities is optimism, not planning.
Entry and perimeter: Reinforce exterior door frames with 3-inch (7.6 cm) screws at strike plates. Most door kicks exploit weak strike plates, not the door itself. Add a secondary deadbolt or door bar if the primary lock is a standard spring latch.
Windows: Security film on ground-floor windows is inexpensive to apply and slows forced entry while holding glass together if breakage occurs.
Lighting: Motion-sensor lighting on exterior approaches deters casual opportunists and alerts you to movement.
Communications: A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather radio and a backup hand-crank or battery radio for local news and emergency broadcasts lets you monitor conditions without phone or internet dependency.
Sanitation: If municipal water fails, your toilet becomes a problem within 24 hours. Identify your sanitation plan before the event: a portable camping toilet with waste bags, or a bucket-and-bag system, covers the gap.
Daily household operations
A shelter-in-place period is not a waiting game — it requires structured daily management or critical systems drift into failure.
Assign roles before the event. During a bug-in:
- One person manages supply inventory and daily consumption tracking
- One person handles security and perimeter checks at intervals
- Everyone rotates cooking and water management duties
Track consumption from day one. The common failure mode is allowing consumption to run at normal rates until suddenly supplies are nearly depleted. Count what you use each day against your estimated total supply.
Establish a morning status check: water reserve, food remaining, medical status of all household members, security conditions, any changes in external situation (monitoring radio/communications). This takes 15 minutes and prevents the unpleasant discovery that something has been silently running down.
For managing household morale and the psychological demands of extended confinement, see boredom in extended emergencies.
Communications during shelter-in-place
External communication becomes more critical, not less, when you are stationary:
- NOAA weather radio (seven frequencies between 162.400–162.550 MHz) broadcasts 24/7 and is independent of internet or cell networks
- Establish a daily check-in schedule with your out-of-area contact — someone outside the affected region who can relay status if local communications fail
- Know the frequency and schedule of any neighborhood or community radio net
- Have a written plan that household members can follow if they become separated before the shelter-in-place begins
When bug-in becomes untenable
A shelter-in-place is not a permanent decision. Conditions change. You should reassess at defined intervals — every 24 hours during a fast-moving situation, every 72 hours for slower events.
Conditions that flip a stay decision to a go decision:
- Structural damage to the building that compromises safety
- Supply level drops below 72 hours on any critical resource
- A specific threat (fire, rising water, active security breach) requires immediate movement
- A medical emergency exceeds what can be managed at home
If you need to leave after you've bugged in, your bug-out plan and pre-loaded go-bags are what enable orderly departure. Keep them accessible even during an extended stay — a bag stored in the garage instead of the car is still accessible in 90 seconds.
Practical checklist
- Write explicit stay vs. leave triggers on a card and post them before any event
- Calculate your household's supply depth at 72-hour, 2-week, and 30-day benchmarks
- Stock water to at least 2 gallons (7.6 L) per person per day for expected duration
- Identify and pre-arrange your sanitation backup before municipal water fails
- Reinforce at least one exterior door and install motion-sensor exterior lighting
- Assign daily roles and implement a morning status check from day one
- Test and verify your NOAA weather radio and out-of-area communication contact
- Keep go-bags accessible, not in storage, even during an active bug-in
- Set a 24-hour reassessment schedule and enforce it — staying is re-decided, not permanent
For the full decision between staying and leaving, see bug-out planning for the other side of this decision, and evacuation planning for the operational specifics of departure once the decision is made.