Is Your Backyard Emergency Kit FEMA-Ready?

There’s a tote in the shed labeled “emergency kit” that hasn’t been opened since the last time the shelves went bare. Water in there somewhere, a headlamp, maybe a first aid kit picked up two moves ago. It feels like enough right up until you check it against an actual standard instead of your memory of packing it.

The short answer: FEMA’s official Ready.gov checklist names 11 core items and 14 additional ones. It’s easy for a backyard kit to be missing some of the 11 core items and the household-specific ones, like a non-sparking wrench, local maps, and copies of family documents. Run the 10-point audit below against your own kit, item by item, and note what’s actually missing rather than what you assume is in there.

What FEMA’s Official Checklist Actually Requires

Every August and September, “pack an emergency kit” gets repeated as generic advice: water, food, done. The government checklist behind that advice is more specific. Ready.gov’s “Recommended Items to Include in a Basic Emergency Supply Kit” names 11 core items: water and non-perishable food for several days, an extra cell phone battery or charger, a battery-powered or hand-crank NOAA Weather Radio with extra batteries, a flashlight with extra batteries, a first aid kit, a whistle, a dust mask paired with plastic sheeting and duct tape, moist towelettes with garbage bags and plastic ties, a non-sparking wrench or pliers to shut off utilities, a can opener if the kit contains canned food, and local maps (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29).

Ready.gov describes this list as a starting point rather than a finished kit, and tells households to weigh it against their own situation, pets included (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29). For September 2026, FEMA’s National Preparedness Month theme, “Americans Stand Ready,” names building a kit as one of three headline recommended actions for the month (FEMA.gov, 2026-09-01). That’s the backdrop for this audit: a specific, numbered government list, not a general prepping mood.

Run the 10-Point Self-Audit

Go find the kit right now and check off each point as you actually locate it. Don’t count “close enough.” A radio that only runs on house current instead of batteries doesn’t count. A first aid kit that’s been raided for band-aids since the last camping trip doesn’t count either.

1. Water and food for several days. Check dates on anything packaged, and check that there’s actually enough water stored, not just a couple of bottles rolling around the bottom of the tote.
2. A way to keep your phone charged. An extra battery or a charger, ideally one that doesn’t depend on a wall outlet (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29).
3. A NOAA Weather Radio, battery-powered or hand-crank, with extra batteries. A phone weather app is a common substitute, which is fine until the network is the thing that’s down. If you’re shopping for one, our hand-crank weather radio review covers what separates a unit worth keeping by the door from one that ends up as a paperweight.
4. A flashlight with extra batteries. Not the one currently living in a kitchen drawer for random household use, a dedicated one that stays in the kit and gets tested on the same schedule as everything else here, not just when the power happens to go out.
5. A stocked first aid kit. Check expiration dates on any medication or ointments, not just that the box is present.
6. A whistle. Small, easy to lose, easy to skip, and specifically on the official list as a way to signal for help.
7. A dust mask, plastic sheeting, and duct tape. Three separate items that get treated as one vague “sealing stuff” category and often only one of the three actually makes it into the tote.
8. Moist towelettes, garbage bags, and plastic ties for sanitation. The unglamorous items that get skipped first when someone is packing a kit quickly.
9. A non-sparking wrench or pliers to shut off utilities. This is an easy item to leave out of a home-built kit, and Ready.gov lists it to turn off utilities (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29).
10. A can opener and local paper maps. Both feel obsolete until the power and the phone signal are both down at once.

Tally your score out of 10. Anything under 10 means the kit doesn’t yet match the FEMA-listed items, regardless of how full the tote looks.

The Items That Are Easy to Overlook

The wrench or pliers from point 9 deserves its own callout, because it’s easy to skip and easy to misunderstand. It isn’t for general repairs. Ready.gov lists it for turning off utilities during an emergency (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29). Mains AC wiring, sockets, and breakers are a different category entirely: that work belongs to a licensed electrician and your local code official, not a self-audit checklist. This point is about utility shutoff hardware, nothing electrical.

A related assumption worth checking: buying a commercial “72-hour kit” does not automatically mean the FEMA checklist is satisfied. Pre-built kits are built for a general buyer, so check one against the list item by item. Items that depend on your own household, such as the non-sparking wrench, local maps, and copies of family documents in a waterproof container, are worth double-checking specifically. If your kit started as a store-bought bag, points 9 and 10 above are a good place to start.

This isn’t the first time this audit has been worth running. Kits also degrade over time: water rotates out, batteries corrode, medications expire, which is why a single check when the kit is first packed isn’t enough. If you ran a similar pass at the end of last year, How to Audit Your Emergency Kit Before the New Year covers that seasonal version of the same exercise, and the differences between the two audits are mostly about what has quietly expired since, not about the core checklist itself.

Do You Need a Can Opener If You Don’t Store Canned Food?

Not strictly. Ready.gov’s list attaches a condition: a can opener if the kit contains canned food (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29). Even for households that lean on dehydrated or freeze-dried supplies, it’s a small, low-cost item, and some non-perishable food, whether it’s yours or borrowed from a neighbor, arrives in a can.

What FEMA Adds Beyond the Basic 11

Once the 10-point audit above is handled, Ready.gov lists 14 additional items to consider layering on top, tailored to your actual household rather than a generic list. These include prescription medications and glasses, infant formula and diapers if applicable, pet supplies, copies of important family documents kept in a portable waterproof container, cash, a fire extinguisher, and a complete change of clothing (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29). None of these are optional in the sense of being unimportant, they’re optional in the sense that they depend on who lives in your house. A household with an infant or an elderly parent on daily medication has a materially different “complete” kit than a household without either, even though both would score the same on the 10-point core audit.

How Many Kits Does Your Household Actually Need?

One tote in the shed is a start, not the finish line. FEMA’s Ready campaign suggests households consider having at least two emergency supply kits: a full kit at home, plus smaller portable kits in a workplace, a vehicle, or other places you spend time (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29). Ready.gov’s Build A Kit page makes the same point, advising supplies for home, work, and cars (Ready.gov). If your 10-point score above was solid but everything lives in one shed tote, that’s the next gap to close, not a bigger version of the same single kit.

Where the Audit Overlaps With Blackout Prep

Points 2 through 4 of the audit, phone power, the weather radio, and the flashlight, are really one category: staying informed and staying lit once the power is out, not just surviving the first few hours of an event. That category gets bigger fast once you look past the minimum FEMA list toward a full room-by-room approach, since a single flashlight and one phone battery cover an individual, not a household trying to function through a multi-day outage. How to Build a Blackout Kit That Works, Room by Room picks up where this audit’s power and light points leave off, room by room instead of item by item.

A FEMA-Ready Kit Is Only One Piece of the Picture

It’s worth being clear about what this audit does and doesn’t cover. Ready.gov’s core framework asks households to do three things: build a kit, make a family emergency plan, and stay informed about the hazards specific to where you live. This self-audit only addresses the first of those three (Ready.gov, 2024-05-29). A perfect 10-point score on the kit doesn’t mean your household has agreed on where to meet if you’re separated, or knows which hazards are actually likely in your area. Those are separate exercises, and neither one is solved by more items in a tote.

Score your kit against the 10 points above, note anything missing, and replace it before National Preparedness Month is over rather than adding it to a list for next year. The gap in most homemade kits is a handful of specific, overlooked items, not a kit that needs to be rebuilt from nothing, so the fix is usually smaller than the tote makes it feel.