Emergency Preparedness Checklist

Pull the FEMA National Risk Index for the property's county and cross-check with state and local emergency management hazard maps. Typical residential hazards: fire, severe weather (tornado, hurricane, winter storm), flood, earthquake (CA/PNW), wildfire WUI zones, gas leak, and active threat. Note building-specific factors — high-rise vs. garden-style, age of electrical, basement units, single egress.

Use a simple 1-5 likelihood × 1-5 impact matrix per hazard. Impact should consider life-safety, displacement risk, structural damage, and business interruption. Anything scoring 12+ gets its own annex in the emergency plan; lower-score hazards are covered by the general response procedures.

OSHA 29 CFR 1910.38 sets the minimum content for an Emergency Action Plan in commercial properties: evacuation procedures and route assignments, procedures for employees who remain to operate critical operations, accounting for evacuated personnel, rescue/medical duties, and reporting procedures. For residential, mirror the same structure scaled to occupants.

Many commercial general liability carriers offer premium credits for documented EAPs and drill records. Send the draft to your broker for review and to counsel for landlord-tenant compliance — particularly notice and entry rules during emergency response.

Export current resident contacts from AppFolio, Buildium, or Yardi and confirm primary phone, secondary contact, and email. Flag residents with disabilities or mobility limitations who need evacuation assistance — keep that list confidential and accessible only to staff with a need to know.

Send a non-emergency test through the SMS / email broadcast tool (AppFolio messaging, Twilio, RingCentral, or a dedicated mass-notification service). Track delivery and bounce rates; bounces above 5% mean the contact roster needs cleanup before an actual incident.

Pull the bounce report and reach out to affected residents through the leasing office or a posted notice. Do not skip this — a 10% bounce rate means 10% of residents won't get the evacuation alert during a real fire.

Lobby, mail room, and laundry room signage with 911, after-hours maintenance line, gas company, water utility, and property management office. Refresh laminated copies annually so phone numbers don't go stale.

Most states require working smoke detectors on every level and CO detectors near sleeping areas in any unit with a fuel-burning appliance or attached garage. Provide 24-48 hour written entry notice per state law, test each device, replace 9V or AA batteries, and log the unit number, test date, and tester initials. Keep the log for 7 years — it's the habitability defense if a fire claim ever lands.

NFPA 10 requires monthly visual inspection and an annual service tag from a licensed fire-protection vendor. Six-year internal exam and 12-year hydrostatic test on rechargeables. Common gotcha: corridor extinguishers sitting expired because the contracted vendor missed a building on their route — verify every tag, not just a sample.

NFPA 25 governs sprinkler inspection (quarterly, annual, 5-year). NFPA 72 governs fire alarm testing. Both require a licensed contractor and a signed inspection report filed with the local AHJ. Notify residents 48 hours in advance and coordinate with the central monitoring station so the test doesn't trigger a real fire department dispatch.

NFPA 110 requires monthly 30-minute exercise under load and an annual 4-hour load bank test for emergency generators serving life-safety loads (elevators, fire pump, egress lighting). Top off diesel and add stabilizer; stale fuel is the most common reason a generator fails when the grid actually drops.

Standard cache: bottled water (1 gallon per person per day, 3-day supply for staff), first-aid kit per ANSI Z308.1, AED with current pads, flashlights with fresh batteries, hand-crank radio, hard hats, traffic cones, and plywood for window board-up. Rotate water and food annually; check AED pad and battery expiration dates.

NFPA 101 Life Safety Code requires unobstructed egress at all times. Walk every stairwell, corridor, and exterior exit. Common violations: bicycles in stairwells, storage in mechanical rooms blocking secondary egress, propped fire doors, dead-bolted exit doors. Photograph and ticket each issue in the work order system.

Each floor's map shows 'You Are Here', primary and secondary egress routes, and the designated outdoor assembly point. Update if any unit numbers, stairwells, or assembly areas have changed since last year. Some jurisdictions (Chicago, NYC) require AHJ-approved evacuation diagrams in specific locations.

Coordinate with the local fire marshal — many jurisdictions require advance notification or an observer for high-rises. Time the evacuation, identify floors that lagged, and note any residents who needed assistance. The drill record is what the AHJ asks for during inspection.

Address the issues found in the first drill — blocked exits, alarm zones that didn't sound, residents who didn't evacuate — then re-run within 30 days. Do not close out the year's preparedness cycle on a failed drill.

Every leasing agent, maintenance tech, and on-site manager needs a named role: incident commander, floor wardens, accountability officer at the assembly point, AED responder. Run a 60-90 minute tabletop annually and document attendance — OSHA cites missing training records more often than missing plans.

Email and post in the resident portal: shelter-in-place vs. evacuate guidance, assembly point location, where to find the floor's map, how to report a gas smell or water leak after-hours, and renters insurance reminder. Renters insurance is not emergency response, but a major incident with uninsured residents is the second crisis the manager has to manage.

Pull COIs for the water-mitigation vendor (ServPro, BELFOR, Servicemaster), board-up contractor, electrician, plumber, locksmith, and tree service. Each needs current general liability and workers comp naming the property as additional insured. A lapsed COI on a 2 a.m. flood call leaves the manager personally exposed.

Email the vendor's office contact requesting an updated certificate naming the property entity as additional insured. If they cannot produce one within two weeks, line up a replacement vendor before the next preparedness cycle starts.

Cover: how rent collection continues if AppFolio or the bank's ACH is offline, where resident files live if the leasing office is unreachable, the alternate office location, and the order of restoration priorities (life-safety, then dry-in, then habitability, then cosmetic).

Pull the declarations page and confirm replacement-cost coverage, deductible per peril (windstorm and earthquake deductibles are often percentage-based and can be surprising), and loss-of-rents coverage period. In flood-zone properties, verify a separate NFIP or private flood policy — standard property policies exclude flood.

An 'incident' here means anything that triggered evacuation, displaced residents, or caused an insurance claim — fire, flood, severe storm, gas leak, active threat. If yes, the after-action review steps below are required.

Walk the timeline with everyone who responded: what worked, what failed, what was missing. Capture root causes, not just symptoms — 'the alarm panel didn't communicate to monitoring' is a symptom; 'the cell backup module was never installed' is the cause. Feed findings back into next cycle's plan.

Regional manager signs off that the plan, drills, equipment service, and training are complete for the year. File the signed sign-off with the property's compliance binder; the AHJ and the insurance carrier may both ask for it.