A year and a half ago, my blended family—me, my partner, his ex, and her friend—was trying to put together an emergency plan that would keep us and our child, over whom we have joint custody, safe in the event of an earthquake.

Anticipating that cell service would be lost, we devised a strategy to pick up the kids if it was a weekday and an alternate plan if it was a weekend. We decided on a meeting point and there was discussion about stowing take-out bags.

Then the details became fuzzy.

My partner and I debated where to store water and survival supplies, but couldn’t decide whether the house, the back shed, or a car was the best idea. We never came to a conclusion and left everything in the crawlspace under our basement, which in hindsight will almost certainly be inaccessible should a major quake occur.

It was decided that I would stock up on food for everyone.

“We can all go to our house and feed on our mutant kale plants, bird seed, and the 800 pounds of dried pasta that Nuala always has on hand,” my partner suggested to the group.

Thursday’s tsunami warning put these admittedly incomplete plans into action. Within 20 minutes of news of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hitting our phones, the child was picked up from school by the prearranged parents and driven to Grizzly Peak, 1,758 feet in the Berkeley Hills – after we were from had experienced a tsunami warning following a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. The school offered no such guidance, but the chaos and lack of information led us to believe this was the best course of action.

In the meantime, I took stock of our supplies. The garden in our back yard miraculously still has mutant-sized kale plants. We were low on bird seed, but as promised, I had several pounds of dried pasta. Other than that, all we had was a few cans of coconut milk, some mac ‘n’ cheese, and half a box of granola bars.

I completely forgot to stock up on non-perishable foods. If the five of us were relying on the meager food I had gathered, I decided it would be up to me to sacrifice myself first if we had to resort to cannibalism.

It was not just our family that was not fully prepared for such a crisis.

An hour after the warning, it was still unclear to me how a tsunami would affect Oakland, where we live. There was little information and the warning sirens, one of which was outside my front door, remained silent.

While San Francisco Mayor London Breed tweeted information, Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao’s report contained no such references.

That doesn’t mean everyone in Alameda County has completely shirked their duty. The county has an online map of tsunami danger areas where people can enter their address to see if there is a risk in the event of a tsunami. I entered our home and school addresses and learned that none of us faced an imminent threat from a tsunami. The county is directing residents to check a government website that offers advice on tsunami protocols. However, the guidance depends in part on responding to information provided by officials. In the panic that followed this tsunami warning, none was provided.

Decades of dangerous wildfires have forced California to develop detailed protocols for what to do if a wildfire breaks out near residential areas. Fire safety is an area that many of us are well versed in. During the dry season, residents practice preventative measures such as clearing brush around their homes, preemptively attaching their trucks to horse trailers to quickly evacuate livestock, and refueling their vehicles with gasoline. Our parks have been closed due to the warning signs and officials are sharing this information on social media.

Obviously we have no such plans for tsunamis. The lack of communication from our leaders on Thursday showed us that we must take steps to educate ourselves about such a disaster and develop our own emergency plans.

My family text thread is already full of suggestions on exactly how to do this. We’re considering expensive, long-range walkie-talkies in case cell service goes down. I found an old backpack that I can use as a travel bag. As I write this, I’m inserting passports and car titles.

All five of us arranged a meeting to discuss our plans and discuss the details in more detail: Since there are two of us working in San Francisco, for example, how will our operating order change if the ferries stop, the bridge is closed or stalls BART, as happened on Thursday, shutting down traffic over the Transbay Tube?

There is a lot to find out. But as stressful as Thursday’s tsunami warning was, it was a wake-up call for all of us to be better prepared.

Next stop for me: the supermarket to finally stock up on emergency food.

Reach Nuala Bishari: [email protected]; Bluesky: @nuala.bsky.social