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The Civic Handshake

The first 72 hours belong to neighbors. Day three is when official systems arrive — if the street can talk to them. This is a handshake: shared language and a place to start, not a substitute for official response.

Two clocks

First clock — the street

Soup, names, the house that cannot do the stairs. Disaster research has been boringly consistent: the people who pull neighbors out are already there. The Street and the County.

Second clock — the county

Emergency management, fire, public health. They speak Incident Command because that language lets a fire engine and a volunteer group occupy the same block. That clock starts when they can get to you.

A path, not a meeting: write a household plan → name your three → find the OEM → sign up for local alerts → sit IS-100 if you will speak for a block → take CERT if your county offers it → Stop the Bleed / CPR → ham if the radio is calling you.

The four shelves of capability · Who are your three? · Find your OEM in twenty minutes

Where you are

A US ZIP fills this panel with a state-shaped search recipe and national pages for the hazards the zip pack already knows. Until then, run the twenty-minute ritual.

Street

The first clock. Plans, names, paper, the households that need more than a kit.

Handshake

Shared language with whoever shows up in a truck. Vocabulary, not a costume.

Day three

When official systems arrive: staging, unaffiliated energy, recovery paperwork, the Station as a civic node.

Terrarium is not a CERT program, not a county OEM, and not a VOAD. Completing IS-100 does not make you Incident Commander of the cul-de-sac. No federal emergency agency blesses this store, its score, or your street. The score does not feed the National Preparedness Goal and does not sit inside THIRA.

Neighborhood coordination · Father Tree and Mother Mycelium · Free official pages · Courses