Preparing for the Unexpected

Are you ready and prepared if you have to be evacuated from your home or workplace due to an unexpected major emergency?

Get prepared, pack your bag and be ready to go is the message from your local Civil Contingencies Unit.

They now have a practical guide for people to help them be prepared. It contains useful contact numbers and advice on what to do in a major emergency and can be downloaded from www.staffordshireprepared.gov.uk

The guide also provides a list of basic necessities people are encouraged to keep in a bag in an easily accessible place. Items that could prove useful if people need to be evacuated such as foil blankets, waterproof candles and matches, wind-up torch, sleeping bags, first aid kit and toiletries.   

The aim of the guide is to encourage people to be prepared and ready for the unexpected themselves. If there is a situation where people have to be evacuated from their homes or workplace, it will be more comfortable for them to have emergency supplies of some basic necessities with them. This would include water, tinned food, sleeping bag and toiletries. If they have animals, they would also need food for them.

In a crisis situation, for example if you had to be evacuated from your home, you might not have a lot of warning so the more that you can prepare ahead of time the better. The guide helps you do this. So why not take a few minutes to fill in some basic details about you and your community and then put the guide in an easy-to-reach place such as next to the phone or on your fridge door? This information could be really helpful in keeping you, your family, friends and neighbours safe in an emergency.