Last
Call.
Sixty Minutes.
Your field manual for the hour between the Alberta Emergency Alert and the moment you back out of the driveway — wildfire, flood, or whatever comes next.
This guide provides general information about household evacuation preparedness for wildfire, flood, and related hazards in Alberta. It is NOT emergency-management advice, legal advice, or insurance advice. The author is not a first responder, emergency-management officer, or licensed adjuster. Always follow the instructions of Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA), the RCMP, and your municipality during an active event. Routes, reception centres, and protocols change.
The first ten minutes
are the ones that ruin you.
The phone goes off. Not the soft ping of a text — the hard, three-tone shriek of an Alberta Emergency Alert. You read the words "evacuation order" and your brain stops working the way it normally does.
You stand in the kitchen. You open a drawer for no reason. You pick up your keys and put them down. You think about your passport for the first time in two years. Somewhere in the back of the house a child is asking a question you cannot hear.
By the time you've started moving with purpose, fifteen minutes are gone. People who lose things in evacuations don't lose them in the fire. They lose them in those first fifteen minutes.
Every Alberta household that has been through Slave Lake, Fort McMurray, Jasper, High River, or any of the smaller orders nobody outside the province remembers learned the same thing: the hour is enough — but only if the decisions were already made.
Twelve chapters.
Eight templates.
One hour.
Built from real Alberta evacuations — wildfire and flood — anonymized completely. Every chapter is a decision you should not be making for the first time at 2 a.m. with smoke on the horizon.
- 01The Call You Hope Never Comes — Alert vs. Order, and Why Most People Freeze
- 02The 60-Minute Window — The Minute-by-Minute Triage Order
- 03The Go-Bag Doctrine — Five-Minute, Thirty-Minute, Sixty-Minute Tiers
- 04Documents That Must Leave With You — The Photo-of-Everything Rule
- 05The House Walkdown — Gas, Power, Water, Windows, Sprinklers
- 06Pets, Livestock, and Large Animals — Carriers, Halters, Muster Points
- 07Vehicle Readiness — Fuel Rule, Jerry Cans, the Year-Round Trunk Kit
- 08The Route Out — Primary, Secondary, and the Highway 2 Backup
- 09Where You're Sleeping Tonight — Reception Centres and AEMA Registration
- 10The Wait — Staying Informed Without Doomscrolling
- 11Re-Entry — What to Inspect First, and When Not to Go Home Yet
- 12After the Order Lifts — Insurance Triggers and Government Recovery
- +Glossary · Government Resources · Operator Maintenance
Resource Pack — what you also get
- LCE-OS-FAMILY_EVAC_PLAN.pdf — Fillable household evacuation plan: meeting points (in-town and out-of-town), out-of-area contact, kid pickup chain, special-needs notes. Print it. Stick it inside a cupboard door.
- LCE-OS-GO_BAG_CHECKLIST.pdf — Tiered checklist: what gets grabbed in five minutes, what gets packed in thirty, what gets loaded in sixty. Pre-built so you don't have to triage at 2 a.m.
- LCE-OS-DOCUMENT_GRABLIST.xlsx — Document inventory with photo-log column: where each item lives, what it looks like, and a tickbox for "already scanned to cloud."
- 5 fillable Word templates — Home Walkdown Checklist, Pet & Livestock Evacuation Sheet, Vehicle Readiness Log, Reception Centre & Contact Sheet, Re-entry Damage Inspection Worksheet.
Who this is for.
In an Alberta wildfire or flood corridor — foothills, boreal belt, the Bow, Red Deer, Athabasca, or North Saskatchewan basins. On a rural acreage with livestock. In any community that's been put on alert before and probably will be again.
Kids, elderly relatives, pets, large animals, medical equipment, or anyone whose evacuation can't be improvised. A single vehicle, or vehicles parked in different places. Out-of-area family who'd take you in but have never been asked.
Commercial business-continuity planning, oil-and-gas site evacuation procedures, or municipal emergency-management policy — this isn't that manual. This is a household manual. Big-rig response is its own discipline.
One price. Forever yours.
Other "emergency prep" courses charge $200–$500 and bury you in survivalist fantasy. We charge $48 because the work is in the checklists, the document grab-list, and the twelve decisions you should never have to make for the first time at 2 a.m. Buy it, print it, stick it in the cupboard, hope you never need it.
Frequently asked
Is this Alberta-specific?
The agencies (AEMA, Alberta Wildfire, the RCMP), the alert system, the reception-centre protocol, and the route examples are Alberta-specific. The doctrine — the 60-minute window, the tiered go-bag, the document grab-list, the route binder — works anywhere in Canada. Adapt the agency names, keep the moves.
Wildfire or flood?
Both. The opening hour is structurally the same for either hazard — alert, triage, walkdown, route, register. The differences (which way the smoke is moving, whether the basement is the problem, when to shut the gas) are called out at the chapter level so you don't have to switch manuals mid-evacuation.
Who wrote it?
An Albertan in our editorial circle who watched a town empty out in under two hours and realized the families who got out clean weren't the prepared ones — they were the rehearsed ones. Reviewed alongside the Insurance Claim Recovery and Alberta Estate Administration manuals to keep brand voice and tactical structure consistent.
Does it replace AEMA or municipal guidance?
No. During an active event, the order from AEMA, the RCMP, or your municipality is the order — always. This manual is what you do in the months before the alert sounds, and the decisions you make in the hour after, so that when the official order comes, you can follow it without losing your head, your pets, or your passport.
What format do I get?
One PDF (the manual), two fillable PDFs (family evacuation plan + tiered go-bag checklist), one .xlsx (document grab-list), and five .docx template checklists. Bundled as a zip after checkout. Open in Word, Excel/Numbers/Google Sheets, or any free PDF reader.
How does delivery work?
Checkout is handled by Stripe — secure, encrypted, takes thirty seconds. The moment payment goes through, the Stripe confirmation page shows you a download link for the full zip — manual PDF plus the 8-piece resource pack. The link works indefinitely. You'll also get a Stripe receipt by email which contains the same link, so save that too. If you ever lose access, reply to your receipt and we'll resend within a few hours.
Refund policy?
Digital products are generally non-refundable once delivered. That said — if the manual genuinely doesn't fit your situation and you tell us within 14 days, we'll refund you. We'd rather you ask than feel stuck.