Prepare Utah

Utah household readiness. A free, private, plain-language preparedness site for Utah households, at prepareutah.com. Sister site to FaultLine Utah (earthquake hazards by address).

• Make my plan (start.html): a short questionnaire (county, setting, home and cooling, household, health, diets and allergens, work and getting around, resources).
• My plan (plan.html): the personal plan it builds. A free "first hour" starter list, priority bands for 15 Utah hazards plus money, the household's county alert sign-up, checklists for 7, 14, 30 and 90 days sized to the household, a budget-aware "buy first" list, downloadable calendar reminders (.ics, made in the browser), cards for diets and work, before/during/after actions, and a print/PDF view.
• Hazards (hazards/): one stand-alone guide per hazard, with live official links.
• Alerts (alerts.html): how to get emergency alerts in every Utah county, plus phone settings, weather radio, and what "Ready, Set, Go" means.
• Guides (guides/): 90 days without utilities (built on the FEMA-funded magnitude 7.0 Salt Lake City segment scenario, where water stays out longest), family communication plan (fill in, save in the browser, print folding wallet cards), food storage, insurance, stay or go, after a disaster, and a neighborhood plan worksheet. The Guides page also links Be Ready Utah's business, school, community and CERT sections.
• En español (es/): a Spanish essentials page (alerts, first-hour steps, key risks, official Spanish resources). It was translated here and needs review by a native speaker before it's promoted.
• Sources (sources.html) and About (about.html): every source, privacy, the disclaimer, and the sister-site note.

It's a plain static site: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, with nothing to install. Answers and checkmarks stay in the visitor's browser (localStorage keys ur.profile, ur.checks, ur.tab; "ur" is left over from the working name and isn't visible to anyone). No accounts, cookies, analytics, or outside fonts. The only outside request is the optional "Recent Utah earthquakes" list, which loads public USGS data and falls back to a link if USGS is down.

Folders

site/                     ← the website; this folder is what gets published
  *.html, hazards/*.html  pages (generated by scripts/build.js; don't edit by hand)
  assets/css/style.css    all styling, plus print styles
  assets/js/sources.js    ← source registry (id → publisher, title, URL)
  assets/js/hazards.js    ← hazard guide text
  assets/js/planner.js    ← county bands, checklist items, quantities, household cards, diets, work, first hour
  assets/js/alerts.js     ← county alert sign-ups and statewide alert steps
  assets/js/guides.js     ← guide text (90 days without utilities, family plan, food, insurance, stay or go, recovery, neighbors)
  assets/js/tools.js      the family plan and neighborhood forms (saved in the browser, wallet cards)
  assets/js/*.js          app code (questionnaire, dashboard, USGS list, citations)
  sitemap.xml             generated with the pages
  robots.txt, _headers
scripts/
  build.js                regenerates the HTML pages from the content files (Node, no npm install)
  serve.py                local preview server
  test_site.py            headless browser tests (Playwright)
  screenshots.py          test screenshots and a sample printed plan
  linkcheck.js            checks every source and county alert link (runs monthly on GitHub)
  checklinks.sh           older ad-hoc link checker
notes/                    private drafts, not published or committed (see .gitignore)

Preview it on this Mac

python3 scripts/serve.py

Then open http://localhost:8738. Press Ctrl+C in the terminal to stop it. (FaultLine Utah uses port 8737, so both can run at once.)

Change the words

What	Where
Hazard guide text	site/assets/js/hazards.js
Checklist items, county bands, household cards	site/assets/js/planner.js
Sources and links	site/assets/js/sources.js
County alert sign-ups	site/assets/js/alerts.js
Guides	site/assets/js/guides.js (forms for the family plan and neighborhood worksheet are TOOLS in scripts/build.js)
Spanish page	the "Spanish essentials" section of scripts/build.js, and T.es for its header and footer
Diet list and the words the free-text box recognizes	UR.DIETS and UR.ALLERGENS in planner.js
Work options	UR.WORK in planner.js (tips are in UR.additions)
Home, About, Sources page text, header, footer	scripts/build.js

Cite a source by writing [[source-id]] in any text. The id must exist in sources.js; a missing one shows a red "[source missing]". Mark planning guesses with (estimate) and unconfirmed items with [unverified] or [verify]; both get their own styling.

Then rebuild the pages (Node 16 or newer):

node scripts/build.js

The questionnaire and dashboard read the content files directly, so checklist edits show up without a rebuild. Hazard pages, Sources, About and the sitemap need one. Rebuild before you commit either way, and bump VERSION in build.js when CSS or JS changes so browsers fetch the new files.

FaultLine Utah links

FaultLine Utah is linked from the footer of every page, the home page (sister-site card), the earthquake guide (a "Look up your own address" box and the Learn more list), the personal plan (the hazard-map task and the older-brick card), Sources, and About. The URLs live in two places: SISTER in scripts/build.js and the fl-* entries in sources.js.

How personalization works

• Priority bands (Higher priority / Elevated / Present / Lower). Each county gets a base band per hazard. Setting and household then adjust it:

  • Setting: valley floors raise inversions; foothill/bench homes raise wildfire and landslide; canyon homes raise wildfire, landslide, flood and power.
  • Household: lung or heart conditions raise smoke, dust and outbreaks; powered medical equipment raises power outages; older brick raises earthquake; no winter backcountry use caps avalanche.
  • Heat: Washington County starts highest, then the south, desert and Wasatch Front valleys. No air conditioning, an older adult, a baby, a pregnancy, a chronic condition, or outdoor work each raise it.
  • Home fire: Elevated everywhere; an older adult (or, failing that, someone with limited mobility) raises it.
  • Work: outdoor work raises heat and air quality; hourly or self-employed income raises money.

  The county base bands are an editorial judgment drawn from UGS seismic information, Great Salt Lake proximity, the 2026 drought declaration, Utah Avalanche Center regions and terrain. The site labels them as general guidance, not official risk ratings.

• Quantities: water is 1 gallon per person per day (Be Ready Utah), with totals for 7, 14, 30 and 90 days. Pet water is a labeled estimate. Food is counted in person-days. Flashlights, go-bags and similar items are per person. Cost ranges come from the HiveWatch Utah plan's per-adult estimates and are always labeled as estimates.

• Deduplication: every checklist item exists once and carries tags for the hazards it serves. Deselected hazards drop their hazard-only items.

• First hour: five free steps everyone gets (alerts, meeting places, smoke-alarm test, shutoffs, a water start) plus personal ones while the total stays within 60 minutes. Steps that match a checklist item share its id, so checking either checks both.

• Diet text box: UR.detectDiets matches what people type against each diet's words and checks the boxes it recognizes, only in the browser. Allergen words must be whole words and count only when the text mentions an allergy or names no other diet ("eggplant" isn't an egg allergy). Anything unrecognized is shown in the plan as the person's own note.

• Buy first: the most protective purchases from the 7- and 14-day tiers. Items over the household's budget move down the list. Critical medical items (prescriptions, backup power for medical equipment, formula) always stay near the top.

Keeping links fresh

.github/workflows/linkcheck.yml runs node scripts/linkcheck.js on the 1st of every month (or on demand from the repo's Actions tab). If any source or county alert link is broken, it opens an issue labeled "links" (or updates the open one) with a table of what broke and where it's used. Sites that block scripts (CDC, FEMA, FTC and a few others) are listed separately as "check by hand." Run it locally the same way:

node scripts/linkcheck.js

Checks

python3 scripts/serve.py &
python3 scripts/test_site.py     # needs: pip install playwright && playwright install chromium
python3 scripts/screenshots.py   # writes to screenshots/ (not committed)

For links, list them with grep -o 'https\?://[^" ]*' -r --include=*.html site | sort -u, then run scripts/checklinks.sh on an "id url" list. Some federal sites (CDC, BLS, DOI) return 403 to scripts but load in a real browser; confirm those by hand.

Publishing (GitHub Pages)

Set up the same way as FaultLine Utah. The code lives at https://github.com/prepareutah/prepareutah (public). Every push to main republishes the site within a minute or two through .github/workflows/pages.yml, which uploads the site/ folder. Watch deploys under the repo's Actions tab.

git add -A
git commit -m "Describe the change"
git push

Git and iCloud. This folder is in iCloud Drive, which corrupts Git's internal files if it syncs them. So Git's database lives outside iCloud at ~/.git-repos/prepareutah.git, and the .git here is a one-line pointer to it. On another computer, clone from GitHub instead of opening this iCloud folder. iCloud conflict copies (file 2.json) are kept out of commits by .gitignore and are safe to delete.

Domain. prepareutah.com is registered at GoDaddy (Oct 22, 2026). To point it at GitHub Pages, set these DNS records in GoDaddy and remove the default parked A record:

Type	Name	Value
A	@	185.199.108.153
A	@	185.199.109.153
A	@	185.199.110.153
A	@	185.199.111.153
CNAME	www	prepareutah.github.io

The repo's Settings → Pages already has Source set to GitHub Actions and prepareutah.com as the custom domain. Once DNS is in place and GitHub issues the certificate, turn on Enforce HTTPS there. If the certificate stalls, remove the custom domain and add it back about an hour after the DNS change, as with FaultLine.

To-do before public launch

Accounts and setup

• Register prepareutah.com (GoDaddy, Oct 22, 2026).
• Create the GitHub repo, push, and turn on GitHub Pages with the custom domain (Oct 22, 2026).
• Point GoDaddy DNS at GitHub Pages (table above), then turn on Enforce HTTPS.
• Set up a contact mailbox (for example [email protected]) and add it to the About page in scripts/build.js.
• Add a reciprocal link to Prepare Utah on FaultLine Utah (footer and Make a Plan).

Content

• Replace the placeholder About text (founder story and bio).
• Resolve the items marked [unverified]/[verify] (see Sources and the hazard pages).
• Re-check fast-changing figures (measles counts, H5N1, drought and fire data) and their "as of" dates.
• A share image (og:image) for links posted on social media.

Outreach

• Send the note in notes/dem-report.md to Utah DEM (https://dem.utah.gov/contact/) about Be Ready Utah's lapsed domains, placeholder pages, and broken links. Re-check the links that day.
• Have a native Spanish speaker review es/index.html before linking it widely.
• The 90-day guide mentions the Pentagon's reported FORTRESS initiative using news coverage (Fox News, and Snopes as of Oct. 26, 2026, saying the 90-day figure wasn't confirmed on the record). Update that sentence once the Pentagon publishes the policy.

Alerts to confirm (checked Oct 22, 2026; agencies change vendors, so re-check alerts.js every few months)

• Wayne County: its sign-up link opens the Sevier County Sheriff's Office system. Confirm with Wayne County Emergency Management (435-836-1348).
• Piute County: no public sign-up found. Ask the sheriff's office (435-577-2893) how alerts reach residents.
• Uintah County: its website was blank when checked; the Tri-County link comes from the Daggett and Duchesne sites.
• Evacuation-zone maps: only Washington County (Genasys Protect) and Davis County (fire evacuation zones) are confirmed. Daggett, Duchesne and Uintah bought Genasys evacuation software in 2023, and Beaver, Iron, Garfield and Kane were expected to adopt it; add their links once the counties publish them.
• City systems: only Salt Lake County's list and Layton were checked. Other cities may run their own.

Expert review

• Seismologist: the earthquake guide and the county bands in planner.js.
• Clinician and pharmacist: outbreak, medication and medical-equipment text, the heat-illness steps, and the diabetes, kidney, tube-feeding and allergy tips.
• Registered dietitian: the diet tips (the soft-foods and halal tips rest on thin sources).
• Utah emergency manager: the county priority bands.
• Fire marshal and a licensed plumber: the 90-day guide's heating, fuel storage, generator and pipe-draining text.

Disclaimer

For education and preparedness only. Not medical, engineering, legal, insurance or financial advice, and not an official alert or risk rating. In an emergency, call 911. Not affiliated with the State of Utah or its Be Ready Utah program.