RallyPack — free emergency preparedness

RallyPack helps households, neighborhoods and organizations prepare for wildfire, hurricane, flood and tornado, and for the animals and family members who depend on them. Every feature is free and open source.

Plan to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours

Assume your household may be on its own for at least 72 hours, and build toward 7 to 14 days where wildfire, extreme heat, outages or remote access make that realistic. Help may be delayed, shelters may be full or distant, and normal services may be unavailable. Plan for the minimum rather than the promise of aid.

Wildfire risk is year-round

Your region may still have peak wildfire months, but dangerous fire conditions can recur outside the historic season. Prepare on a continuous readiness cycle, and raise readiness whenever heat, drought, wind, low humidity, holidays, festivals or utility shutoff conditions converge.

Wildfire and water stress reinforce each other

Drought, heat and wind dry vegetation and make fires harder to control. During major incidents, water sources and municipal systems may be strained, while fire ash and sediment can contaminate watersheds and increase treatment costs afterward. Drinking-water networks are built for drinking water and normal fire protection — they should not be assumed to suppress a fast-moving wildfire at community scale. Prepare for evacuation and outages without assuming water, hydrants, shelters or outside assistance will remain available.

RallyPack wildfire trend report — methodology

The RallyPack 10-year global wildfire report counts large and notable wildfire incidents reported by national and state fire agencies, not every fire response. Small, quickly contained fires are intentionally excluded, so counts are far lower than official all-incident totals. Causes are standardized for display while raw labels are preserved on each record. Fires that smoulder and re-ignite may be recorded as separate incidents, which can inflate counts. Hectares represent burned area across recorded incidents, not a global total.

Sources

FEMA — evacuation and shelter-in-place planning considerations (fema.gov)
US National Interagency Fire Center — large-fire incident data (nifc.gov)
CAL FIRE — California incident and cause data (fire.ca.gov)
Copernicus EFFIS — European forest fire information system (effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu)
NOAA / National Weather Service — hurricane and severe weather alerts (weather.gov)
US Drought Monitor / Drought.gov — drought and wildfire-management conditions (drought.gov)
US Forest Service — drought interactions with wildfire and water supply (fs.usda.gov)
USGS — post-fire water quality and watershed impacts (usgs.gov)
NFPA — fireworks ignition and home fire loss estimates (nfpa.org)
American Red Cross — household preparedness guidance (redcross.org)

Take the free readiness quiz, see how your area compares on the readiness map, or create a free account at rallypack.org .

Volunteer Corps

Responder Training Hub

Everything a volunteer responder needs before and during a deployment — the incident command terminology you'll hear on scene, the emergency manuals worth knowing cold, and printable field reference guides for the work itself.

ICS Reference

You may hear the terms Strike Team and Task Force during an incident. They sound similar — both organize resources to accomplish an assignment — but they mean different things. ICS is the standard used by FEMA and emergency services worldwide.

Strike Team

Same resources, working together.

A set number of the same kind and type of resource, operating with common communications and a single leader. Fire departments from across a state might send engines and crews that are organized into one Strike Team under a Strike Team Leader, then assigned to a specific incident or structure-protection task.

•Five Type 1 engines with crews from different departments
•One Strike Team Leader directing the group
•Common communications plan across all units

Task Force

Different resources, one common mission.

Combines different kinds and/or types of resources under one leader to accomplish a specific assignment. An animal response Task Force might pair handlers, a transport vehicle and driver, a veterinarian, livestock feeding personnel, and a logistics resource — different capabilities organized under one Task Force Leader.

•Animal handlers + transport + veterinarian + logistics
•Assignment example: conduct animal welfare checks and feeding-in-place within the evacuation area
•One Task Force Leader accountable for the mixed group

Quick reference: Same resources? Think Strike Team. Different resources with a common mission? Think Task Force.

Command structure glossary

Take FEMA IS-100: Introduction to the Incident Command System (free, online)