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Home Office Website Extract
At Home - Sensible Precautions

This Home Office advice page is at http://213.121.214.245/terrorism5/athome.htm and the relevant part is reproduced below. :-

It is sensible to be prepared for any emergency in the home and to make plans for any major disruption, including severe weather and floods.

In any type of emergency, you could lose access to power, water and telephones and roads could be blocked. Therefore :-

Make sure you know where the main switches for electricity, water and gas are located in your home, as you may need to turn them off in an emergency.

[Author's Note : The links in this list are not part of the Home Office text, but are provided here to help you link to my interpretations of them.]

Supplies & Equipment - A few pointers :

A few essential supplies can make that difference between relative comfort and misery in minor disasters, whilst slightly more supplies and equipment can materially help ensure survival in major disasters. The Home Office advice suggests batteries, a torch, a battery radio, ready-to-eat food, bottled water and blankets. In this section, the writer will show possible choices and sources for these and other supplies.

The Basic List :-

  • Batteries - Enough to run your torch, radio, and/or lantern for at least a couple of days. Large D/LR20, R20, penlight AA/UM3 and rectangular 6F22, are commonest. Check what you need.
  • Torch - Rubberised torches using D/LR20 batteries are good, but awkward to go to the toilet with. Consider a fluorescent portable lantern that can be set down in a room or hung up.
  • Battery Radio or Wind-Up Radio : Battery radios may use six or more LR20 batteries, or penlight R20, AA/UM3 or rectangular 6F22 types. Make sure that the radio can receive AM, FM and long-wave. The 'wind-up' radio is a clockwork design developed for undeveloped countries, but discovered to be useful to campers and survivors. There is increasing use of solar power in items from calculators to watches, so a solar-powered radio is another possibility.
  • Ready to eat Food - NOT FROZEN : Cans of beans, canned or dried soups, canned fruit, tinned meat and tinned fish, packs of cereals, rye-bread and biscuits. A small stock of sweets as high-energy foods. Discussed in more detail on the Food page.
  • Bottled Water - Discussed on Water page. At least 2 to 4 litres per head for from 3 days to 7 days. Rinse containers with Milton solution and store filled bottles or containers inside black bin-bags to keep the water in the dark and fresh. In a crisis, one can line and fill the bath.
  • Blankets - Sleeping bags are better to keep warm in.

16/6/2003 : The writer has just appraised the excellent FEMA document 'Are You Ready ?' on http://www.fema.gov and noted that the Americans devoted over a hundred pages to something H.M. Government restricted to a few short paragraphs. Allowing for different cultural approaches and a greater range of possible disasters in America, the need for a comparable but graduated British response is quite important.

See Threat Assessment - United Kingdom Crisis Vulnerabilities for a personal assessment of UK crisis types and risks.

The Domestic Civil Defence website is the creation and personal property of Richard Edkins.
It may only be used for the purposes outlined on the index to this site.
© Richard Edkins 2003.
Site created 23rd March 2003 and last updated on 9th September 2003.