Stanford
Office of Accessible Education

Emergency Preparedness Tips

Emergency Preparedness Tips for Students with Disabilities

Be CardinalReady by planning in advance for a wide range of emergency situations. Emergencies can happen at any time and without warning. For people with disabilities, there are often additional considerations that should be kept in mind. The following are suggestions for how students with disabilities can become better prepared for emergencies:

General Preparation Tips

  1. Register or update your personal contact information with AlertSU: https://axess.stanford.edu/
  2. Program Stanford's emergency hotline (650-725-5555) into your cell phone.
  3. Create an emergency kit by packing items in a large backpack and/or bags you can easily carry or roll. Be sure to keep it in an easy-to-access location that you would be able to access in a crisis (by a door or window, near your bed, etc). Your kit should contain:
    • A change of clothes for up to a week and personal hygiene items.
    • Water bottle/container and non-perishable food
    • Always keep a 3-5 day supply of prescription medications and/or eye care supplies (contact solution, eye drops, extra glasses). Make a list of all of your prescription names and dosages and keep in your emergency kit. 
    • Extra cell phone charger or battery pack.
    • Back-up power units/inverters for medical equipment and electronic equipment.
    • Battery-powered radio, extra batteries, and a flashlight.
    • Don’t forget your ESA’s or service animal’s needs: Include food, water, medications, leash, and harness. Look into collapsable travel crate and/or a portable/collapsable cat pan with litter. 
  4. Label your adaptive equipment with your current contact information.
  5. Keep your SUID, important papers, and cards in an easy-to-access location - or make a copy of them (paper or stored electronically on a thumb-drive) to keep in your emergency kit. You’ll want to bring your driver’s license, passport, health insurance cards, legal documents (birth certificates, social security cards, will, vehicle registration and ownership papers, marriage/divorce papers, etc.), financial records (such as bank account information, credit and debit cards, government benefits, retirement and investment account statement, tax returns), as well as copies of your insurance policies.
  6. Keep some amount of cash on hand at all times in case power is out in the area and ATM’s are not available.
  7. Be prepared to grab your laptop computer and peripherals. Otherwise, prepare a hard drive or a thumb-drive with your important data stored on it. It’s best to back-up all of your computers to a cloud or put the data on a disk or external drive to be stored somewhere safe, ahead of time, so you don’t have to do it in a rush.

Stanford Specific Emergency Planning Resources

Further Emergency Preparedness Resources: