Detroit Emergency Kit — Personalized for Your Risks

Local Hazard History

Detroit's signature disaster is water in the streets. On August 11, 2014, more than 4.5 inches of rain — over 6 inches in some suburbs — fell in a matter of hours on a metro whose aging sewers couldn't keep up, submerging stretches of nearly every major freeway. Water stood roughly 14 feet deep at the I-75/I-696 interchange, where state police sent divers to check submerged cars, and the storm damaged more than 100,000 homes for an estimated $1.8 billion, one of Michigan's costliest disasters. It happened again on June 25–26, 2021, when 6 to 7 inches of rain flooded thousands of basements, stranded hundreds of cars on Interstate 94 after pump stations lost power, and drew a federal disaster declaration across four counties. Winter is the other threat. The Great Lakes drive ice storms that snap power lines by the thousands — the February 2023 ice storm coated Southeast Michigan in up to half an inch of ice and knocked out power to more than 700,000 customers statewide, many in the Detroit area, some for a week. And the cold can turn deadly: during the late-January 2019 polar vortex, Detroit fell to about −14°F with wind chills near −35°F and stayed below zero for roughly 36 straight hours, prompting a statewide state of emergency.

When Risk Peaks

• Jun–Aug: Peak for the flash floods that define Detroit's risk — the 2014 and 2021 disasters both struck in summer, when slow-moving storms overwhelm the sewers
• Mar–Apr: Snowmelt and spring rain keep basement-flooding risk high
• Dec–Feb: Blizzards, heavy snow, and life-threatening cold; the polar vortex hit at the end of January 2019
• Jan–Mar: Ice storms are the biggest power-outage driver — freezing rain took down the grid across the region in February 2023
• May–Aug: Severe thunderstorms with damaging straight-line winds and the occasional tornado
• Year-round: Extended outages accompany both the floods and the freezes, so backup power and heat matter in every season

What to Pack for Detroit

A Detroit kit has to answer two very different emergencies — a basement filling with water and a house losing heat in a deep freeze:

• Defend the basement — a battery-backup or water-powered backup sump pump keeps working when the grid goes down, which is exactly when the water rises; test your primary pump and keep valuables and documents up off the floor
• Know that flood damage is not covered by standard homeowners' or renters' insurance — a separate flood policy through the National Flood Insurance Program is what pays for a flooded basement
• Plan to hold heat without power — at −14°F an unheated house cools fast; keep cold-rated sleeping bags, wool blankets, and warm layers within reach
• Never run a generator, grill, or camp stove indoors or in an attached garage, and keep a working carbon-monoxide alarm — CO poisoning spikes during winter outages
• 3–5 days of water and no-cook food per person, because both floods and ice storms can cut you off for days
• A real winter car kit from November through March — blanket, boots, shovel, sand or cat litter, charger, and food
• A battery or hand-crank NOAA weather radio for flash-flood, winter-storm, and wind-chill warnings
• Keep IDs, insurance papers, and medications in a grab-and-go pouch

Local Resources

• Detroit Emergency Management & Homeland Security — City emergency planning, alerts, and preparedness guidance for residents.
• NWS Detroit/Pontiac — Local forecasts, flash-flood warnings, and winter-storm and wind-chill alerts.
• FloodSmart.gov (National Flood Insurance Program) — FEMA's flood-insurance program — coverage for the basement flooding standard policies exclude.
• Ready.gov — Federal all-hazards guidance for floods, winter storms, and extreme cold.