Get inside, stay inside, stay tuned. Three instructions cover chemical releases, radiological events and several kinds of severe weather, and almost nobody knows the third one.
What does sheltering in place actually mean?
Putting mass and distance between you and something outside, then staying there until an official source says the risk has passed.
It applies to more situations than people expect: a chemical release from a road or rail incident, a radiological emergency, wildfire smoke, and severe wind. In every case the instruction is the same shape, and the federal guidance states it as get inside, stay inside, stay tuned. The reason it is repeated so simply is that it has to survive being read by a frightened person.
The part people get wrong is the second word. Getting inside is instinctive. Staying there, sometimes for a full day, is not.
Which room, and why
The most interior room on the lowest safe level, with the fewest windows and the most building between you and the outside.
- Interior over exterior. Every wall between you and outside is mass, and mass is the whole mechanism.
- Below grade beats above, for radiological and wind events. A basement centre is the best room most houses have.
- Fewest windows. Windows are the weak point for wind, for chemical infiltration and for radiation alike.
- Choose it now and say it out loud. The households that do this get everyone into the right room in under a minute.
Expert note from Dan Brackett, founder and former distribution lineman
Pick the room on an ordinary evening and walk everybody to it once. Thirty seconds. In an actual event nobody reads a plan, they follow the person who moves first, and that person needs to already know where they are going.
How long do you stay?
For a radiological event, the federal guidance is twenty four hours unless authorities tell you otherwise. For chemical releases it is usually far shorter.
| Event | Get inside within | Stay inside for | Key action | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radiological or nuclear | 10 minutes or more before fallout arrives | 24 hours unless told otherwise | Interior room or basement, remove outer clothing, shower if possible | Ready.gov |
| Chemical release | Immediately | Until the all clear, usually hours | Seal the room, turn off ventilation | Ready.gov |
| Wildfire smoke | When air quality drops | Days, intermittently | One room, windows shut, filter running | Ready.gov |
| Severe wind or tornado | Immediately | Until the warning expires | Lowest interior room, away from windows | National Weather Service |
The trade in sealing a room is real and worth understanding. Sealing keeps contamination out and also keeps carbon dioxide in, so a sealed room is a short term measure of hours rather than days. For a radiological event you are not sealing, you are using mass and time. For a chemical release you are sealing, briefly, and then ventilating once the plume has passed. The two instructions look similar and are not the same.
What to have in that room already
Not a stockpile. A short list that means nobody has to leave to fetch anything.
- A battery or hand crank radio, because staying tuned is the instruction that requires equipment.
- Water for a day, and a torch with spare batteries.
- Plastic sheeting and duct tape, which the federal shelter guidance specifies for sealing windows, doors and vents during a chemical event.
- Medications for anyone in the household who takes them daily.
- Something for children to do, because twenty four hours is a very long time in a basement.
A household in our county keeps exactly this in a plastic tub in the basement, checked at the same time as the smoke alarms. It has been used once, for a rail incident that closed two roads for six hours. The tub cost about thirty dollars and the six hours were, by their own account, boring, which is the outcome you want.
Expert note from Renata Sowell, water and evacuation editor
The radio is the item people skip and it is the one the instruction depends on. Stay tuned is not advice, it is an operational requirement, and a phone in a basement during a regional event is frequently not going to do it.
What should you not do?
Leave to look, drive through it, or rely on a single information source.
- Do not go outside to see. The instruction is the instruction, and the first hour is when the risk is highest.
- Do not drive. A vehicle offers almost no mass and puts you in the open, which is the opposite of what the guidance asks for.
- Do not rely only on national news. Your county’s own feed and local radio are the sources that will carry the all clear.
How the same rooms and the same supplies work during an ordinary outage is covered in what to do in the first four hours of an outage, and the kit that supports all of it is in what belongs in a 72-hour kit.