Ready for the unexpected: How to prep for a national emergency
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What basic items should households stock for a national emergency?
Keep some bottled water in a cool dark place, have alternative ways to keep warm, like blankets or sleeping bags, have a first aid get ready, keep documents in a waterproof bag, and have a roadmap in case GPS is unavailable. So just some of the advice included in the government's new Be Emergency Ready campaign, which urges households throughout the country to take simple steps to prepare for emergencies and periods of Disruption. Every household in the country will get a copy of the booklet through the post by the end of uh September. Uh the d the booklet is actually available online uh on the government website. Uh already to take a closer look at what's included. I'm joined on the line by Kevin Byrne, retired Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel, and by Kevin McSherry of OpenSeason.ie.
Kevin Byrne, if I might go to you first with your military experience. Planning for an emergency, preparing for the unexpected is absolutely vital.
Good morning, David. Yes. No, I have been online and read this document, uh cover to cover as it were. It's fairly simple to do all right. It does expect us to do certain things, but it's it's based, I presume, on the phases of the military emergency planning cycle because of course the civil defence people who probably did this or have a military background in the main, the the the people who do that full time and they do very good work behind the scenes. But you look at things like anticipation. you might identify potential hazards, what can go wrong, you know, and we know that could be floods, wildfires, you know, uh snow and that kind of thing. Prepare. Build resource stockpiles and you have they do realistic exercise training deal uh drills and that's the kind of thing we don't do, you know, we're civilians.
But have your stockpiles ready and have a response. So have a plan. So they said even a bad plan might be better than no plan at all. But I don't know if people can sit down and plan in their busy lives from that point of view. And last but not least, in the military we have recovery. So we restore the vital infrastructure. And the biggest thing we're going to have, David, as you know, is the loss of electricity because so much of our lives are based on that and that's going to be a s a serious impediment to return to normality, I think.
Okay, um so in tur yes, you say you've read this cover to cover, it's not that long, it's only eighteen pages, I think eighteen, nineteen pages. Uh I mean what uh i i the advice seems to be fairly straightforward, fairly sensible, doesn't it?
It it does. But there are of course uh problems with it because I don't know if if um if people are you know have got that space and time to buy bottled water and put it away and then check the date on it. Would they have tins of uh, you know, food that'll survive? Will we have milk that will last if is it powdered or otherwise, you know, UH T stuff? In other words, they're getting to the stage and is this like the iodine tablets? We have them in case something serious happens, but we don't actually want to go to the trouble to do it. It's a great idea. I was in Sweden this time last year at a conference and the Swedes took it very seriously. They have something similar, but they do actually go ahead and put the stuff away in your little box in your in the side of your house and they can live for three or four days on their own without outside uh help.
And that's it's good news, but it's a different mindset than we have here in Ireland, I think.
It probably isn't. Is that what we should all be aiming for, Kevin? That that we could we could cope for three or four days if, you know, the beast from the east comes back and we can't get sliced pans or whatever?
Well, Storm Owen c taught us a lesson w which we haven't learned yet because uh we got hit here in the East. I live in Northville there and we were without electricity for something like eighteen hours, you know. But in that time I found a wind up radio which I didn't actually need, but I have one of those things.
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