Household Readiness

Lesson Overview

The previous lesson named the hazards. This one prepares the home against them. It is the most practical lesson of the course so far, because almost everything in it is something a member is expected actually to do.

The whole lesson turns on one aim drawn from the small-state preparedness model: a household able to manage at home, on its own, for about a week without outside help. We work through what that takes, water, food, warmth, light and power, an emergency kit, and a simple household plan, in calm and ordinary terms. Household readiness is not a survivalist's project but a few unremarkable provisions any home can make. This is also where the course stops describing readiness and starts measuring it, in litres, days, and items on a shelf. Worked through with your own household in mind, it ends in a short shopping list and a few decisions. Hold one rule throughout: every figure here is a floor to build from and a target to adapt, never a number to copy to the letter.

By the end you will be able to explain why a household aims to be self-reliant for about a week, set up its water, food, warmth, light, and power against an emergency, assemble an emergency kit and a grab-bag and keep important things safe, draw up a simple household plan covering warnings, meeting, contact, and care, and keep the whole of it current by checking and rotating it through the year.

Key Terms

• Self-reliance for a week: the standard household aim of managing at home for roughly seven days without outside help, so that scarce assistance can reach those who need it most.
• Readiness horizon: the span a household's stores are meant to cover; the first three days as a firm minimum, about a week as the sensible target.
• Rotation: using stored food and water in the ordinary course and replacing it, so the store stays fresh rather than ageing unused.
• Emergency kit: the household's gathered essentials, radio, first-aid, medication, documents, cash, and hygiene items, kept together and ready to hand, from which the home is run when services fail.
• Grab-bag: a small, pre-packed bag of the bare essentials kept by the door, ready to seize in seconds if the household must leave in a hurry.
• One warm room: heating and occupying a single room when heating fails, rather than trying and failing to warm the whole home.
• Carbon monoxide: the invisible, odourless, deadly gas given off by burning fuel; the reason no fuel-burning appliance not designed and vented for indoor use may ever be run inside.
• Household plan: the agreed understanding of how the household will get warnings, where it will meet, how members will contact one another, and who looks after whom.

Why a week

The aim is easy to state: a home that can look after itself for about a week. The figure is not magic, and a household that can manage three days is far better off than one that can manage none, but a week is the sensible target. The reasoning behind it is the reasoning of the whole course. In a serious emergency, help cannot reach everyone at once. The civil services and the state have finite resources, and they must rightly go first to those in gravest need: the injured, the trapped, those who cannot help themselves. A household that has prepared to manage on its own for the first days is not hoarding or going it alone. It is doing the single most useful thing it can for the whole nation, by being one fewer household to rescue in the crucial early window and one more that has something to spare for a neighbour.

Hold the two readiness horizons clearly, because the preparedness literature speaks in both. The first is the first three days, often called the seventy-two hours, the firm minimum below which no household should sit. That is roughly the window in which a sudden, widespread emergency keeps the ordinary services fully stretched, with roads blocked, crews committed to the worst-hit, and shops shut or stripped, before the larger machinery of relief takes hold. A household that covers those three days unaided takes itself off the list of immediate problems exactly when the list is longest. The second horizon is about a week, the target to build toward once the three days are secure. It exists because real emergencies are untidy: a hard winter storm, a long power failure, or a flood that keeps a district cut off can all run well past three days. Three days is the floor; a week is the aim.

A week is a forgiving span. It does not call for a bunker or a year's supplies, only a modest store of ordinary things, most of which a well-run home half keeps already. There is no merit in stockpiling for its own sake. The discipline the course teaches is proportion: a week's ordinary provision held steadily, not a hoard held anxiously. The rest of this lesson works out what a week's self-reliance requires, one need at a time.

Water

Water comes first. A person can do without much for a week but not without water for long, and the tap depends on power and infrastructure an emergency may take away. So the household stores drinking water in advance. The figure the preparedness literature settles on is about three litres per person per day for drinking and food preparation: enough to keep a person hydrated and make a simple meal, in an ordinary climate at rest. Add water for basic hygiene, washing hands, faces, and the few utensils that must stay clean, which is a defence against the spread of illness when sanitation is disrupted. Together, plan on the order of five to ten litres per person per day.

Across the horizons, that gives clear targets. For the three-day minimum, store at least nine litres of drinking water per person, more if hygiene is to be covered. For the week, store around twenty to twenty-five litres of drinking water per person, and toward forty or fifty litres a head if there is room for the hygiene allowance.

A worked picture makes the scale plain. A household of four, planning a week's drinking water at three litres each per day, needs four times three times seven, about eighty-four litres, call it a round ninety, before any hygiene water is counted. That is the better part of two dozen large bottles, and the single reason water deserves to be planned first and deliberately.

Adapt these figures rather than copy them. A hot spell raises the need sharply; so do the very young, the elderly, an unwell or nursing member, anyone with a fever or being sick, and an animal in the home. Set the figure a little high, because water is the one store hardest to do without and hardest to improvise safely.

Storing it is simpler than it sounds. Clean containers, filled completely with cold tap water, closed tight, and kept cool and dark away from sunlight and fumes, will hold safe drinking water for a long time; mains water stored this way keeps sound for around six months before refreshing, and indefinitely if rotated. Several smaller containers, each light enough for one person to lift and pour, are easier to store and handle than a few large drums, and they tuck in low wherever there is space. Use containers meant for water or food, never ones that have held anything harmful, and label them with the date filled. Bottled water bought for the purpose serves equally well and carries its own dates. Whatever the method, keep the store fresh, checked when in doubt and refilled if there is any doubt at all.

Treating doubtful water, when the store runs low and water of uncertain quality must be made safe, is the business of the next lesson, Coping Without Services, reinforced with the safe heating that boiling so often requires, in person. The principles of safe water are taught in full in the Field Health, Hygiene, and Sanitation course. The household task here is the simpler one of holding a clean store in advance, so the question of treatment need not arise in the first days.

Food

After water comes food, on the same principle: a store for the whole household for about a week, chosen so it keeps and can be eaten with little or no cooking. The shops may be hard to reach or bare, and the means of cooking, which so often depend on power, may be gone, so the store should lean on food that needs no refrigeration and can be eaten cold or barely heated.

The categories are easy to name. Tinned foods are the backbone: fish and meat, beans and pulses, vegetables, fruit, soups and ready meals, and tinned milk, all of which keep for years and most of which can be eaten straight from the tin. Dried staples and long-life carbohydrates carry the bulk of the energy: pasta, rice, oats, crispbread, dried noodles, cereal, and flour, remembering that staples which want boiling depend on a safe means of heating water. Long-life spreads make the rest palatable: jam, honey, peanut butter, yeast extract, a long-life hard or processed cheese. High-energy snacks that need nothing doing to them earn their place for the bad day: dried fruit, nuts and seeds, biscuits, energy bars, and a little chocolate or boiled sweets, which lift the spirits as much as they feed the body. Round it off with the small things that make food usable: salt and seasonings, tea, coffee, long-life drinks, and a manual tin opener kept with the tins, because an electric one is no use when the power is gone.

Plan on roughly two thousand to two and a half thousand calories per person per day, an ordinary adult's daily need, and stock the week against that figure rather than guessing by the bagful; an active member or a growing child may want more. Food that wants heating, a tinned stew, a pot of rice, is fine to keep too, provided the household has a safe means of heating it off the mains, but the core of the store should ask nothing of the kitchen, so that even with no power and no safe stove the household still eats.

The single most important habit is rotation. Build the store from food the household actually eats, kept a little ahead of need, and use and replace it in the ordinary course. The simplest method is to keep the emergency tins and packets in the everyday cupboard, put new stock to the back and draw from the front, and replace what is used on the next ordinary shop, so the store quietly turns over. A store bought once and forgotten will fail when wanted; a store that turns over is always good. Plan too for particular needs: for a baby, the right formula and food held well ahead, since these admit no substitute; for any member on a special diet or with a food allergy, food they can safely eat; and for any animal in the home, easily overlooked and just as easily included, on the same week's reckoning as the people.

   THE WEEK'S FOOD STORE, BY CATEGORY (no fridge, little or no cooking)

   Tinned          fish, meat, beans, vegetables, fruit, soup, milk
   Dried staples   pasta, rice, oats, crispbread, cereal (boiling = stove)
   Spreads         jam, honey, peanut butter, long-life cheese
   Snacks          dried fruit, nuts, biscuits, energy bars, sweets
   Extras          salt and seasoning, tea and coffee, long-life drinks
   Tools           a MANUAL tin opener kept with the tins

   Aim ~2,000 to 2,500 calories per person per day. Buy what you eat,
   keep it a shelf ahead, draw from the front, replace from the back.
   Provide for babies, special diets, allergies, and any animals.

Warmth

In Kaharagia a hard winter is one of the real hazards, and warmth can be the difference between an emergency that is uncomfortable and one that is dangerous, because most homes are heated by means that fail when the power does. So the household prepares to stay warm without its usual heating. These principles are taught in full, and reinforced in person, by the Cold-Weather Operations and Survival course.

The first principle is to keep the warmth a body already makes. Warm clothing in layers and bedding, blankets, duvets, or sleeping bags, do far more than people expect, and several people sharing one room share their warmth. Every member should have to hand a full set of warm layers: a base layer, a warm mid-layer such as a fleece or heavy jumper, an outer layer, and the things that lose the most heat if neglected, a warm hat, gloves, thick socks, and stout footwear, since much of the body's heat goes from the head, hands, and feet. Add enough bedding for the low temperatures a cold home will reach: a good sleeping bag, or two or three blankets and a duvet apiece.

The second principle follows: heat and occupy one room rather than the whole home. Choose a single small room, ideally on the sheltered side with few windows. Close it off, hang spare blankets or a duvet over the windows and across the door, lay something across the gap at its foot, and gather the household in. Body heat and bedding can keep such a space tolerable even when the rest of the home is cold. Keep the floor from drawing heat away by sitting and sleeping on a mat, cushions, or folded bedding rather than bare boards.

The third principle is the gravest caution in this lesson, to be observed without exception: carbon monoxide. Any appliance that burns fuel, gas, petrol, paraffin, charcoal, or wood, gives off carbon monoxide, a gas that cannot be seen or smelt and that kills before its victim understands they are in danger. Only devices made and properly vented for indoor use may ever be run inside. A camp stove, a barbecue, a charcoal brazier, a generator, a patio heater, or any engine or unvented fuel heater must never be operated in a living space, a closed room, a tent, a garage, or any enclosed area, however cold it is. A household may sensibly keep a heating device that does not depend on the power and is designed, sold, and certified for indoor use, and use it strictly to its instructions; anything else burns outside or not at all. A working carbon-monoxide alarm, battery-powered so it survives a power cut, is a cheap and worthwhile addition to any home that keeps fuel-burning appliances. This rule recurs in Coping Without Services, because its breach most often turns a power cut into a death, and it is reinforced in person. Learn it now and let it become absolute: never burn fuel for warmth in an enclosed space.

Light and power

When the power goes, a home goes dark, and darkness brings its own dangers, of falls and injury on stairs and around the home, and its own weight on the spirits. Light is therefore a readiness essential, and easily provided. Torches and head-torches, with a good stock of spare batteries kept with them, are the safest and most useful light, giving a steady beam without flame; a head-torch is especially valuable because it leaves both hands free. Keep at least one torch per person and one or two lanterns for the room the household will gather in, with several full sets of spare batteries of the right sizes. Battery lanterns or LED candles give a soft, safe room light and are a sound buy.

Candles can give light too, but demand great care, because an open flame in a dark, disrupted home, among tired people, children, and unfamiliar arrangements, is a real fire risk. If used at all, they must stand in stable, non-flammable holders on a clear surface, well away from curtains, bedding, and anything that can catch, out of the reach of children and animals, and never left burning unattended or while the household sleeps. Where torches and lanterns are to hand, keep candles only as a last resort.

For power and information the household needs two things ready. The first is the means to hear official broadcasts, dealt with as part of the emergency kit below and resting on a battery or wind-up radio, because when the power and the mobile network are down a radio that needs neither is often the only way official information reaches a home. The second is the means to keep a mobile telephone alive while the network lasts: a charged power bank, kept topped up, will recharge a phone several times over, and a couple of good ones buy days of telephone where a flat battery gives hours. A wind-up or solar charger, and a car charger if the household has a car, are useful further fallbacks. Know in advance exactly where the torches, batteries, radio, and power banks are kept, in one known place, so they can be found in the dark rather than hunted for by the light of a phone that is itself running down.

The household emergency kit

It is one thing to own the essentials and another to lay hands on them at once, in the dark, perhaps while leaving in haste. The answer is a gathered emergency kit: the essentials kept together, in one known place, ready to take up. This is the larger of the household's two packs, the kit from which the home is run when services fail. It is distinct from the smaller grab-bag in the next section, which is the part of it you could carry out of the door in seconds.

A sound household kit holds a radio that does not depend on the mains, a battery or wind-up set with spare batteries beside it; a first-aid kit, with the knowledge to use it, which the Combat First Aid course teaches in full, covering the dressings, plasters, bandages, antiseptic, scissors, tweezers, gloves, and simple painkillers a household should hold; a supply of any regular medication, kept a week ahead or as much as can sensibly be held, so a regular medicine does not run out when a pharmacy may be shut or unreachable; the household's important documents, kept safe, dry, and together; some cash in small denominations, against the day card machines and cash points do not work; and basic hygiene and sanitation items, the soap, hand sanitiser, wet wipes, toilet paper, sanitary items, and refuse bags that keep a household clean and well when usual arrangements are disrupted, which the Field Health, Hygiene, and Sanitation course treats in full. Add the small useful things wanted across every emergency and easily forgotten: a torch and spare batteries, a whistle to signal for help, a multi-tool or pocket knife, strong tape and a length of cord, a notebook and pen, spare house and car keys, and warm spare clothing. Review the kit from time to time, as medication, batteries, documents, and needs change.

A word on the documents, because they are forgotten until urgently wanted. Identity papers, proof of address, records of property, tenancy, and insurance, bank, medical, and prescription details, and important contact numbers should be kept somewhere safe, dry, and known, ideally gathered in a waterproof wallet or folder, so they can be protected from water and fire and taken quickly. Keep copies as well as originals, and a secure digital copy where the household is able, so the loss of the papers is not also the loss of the information.

   THE HOUSEHOLD EMERGENCY KIT (in one known place)

   [ ] battery or wind-up radio     [ ] first-aid kit (and the skill)
   [ ] water and food for a week    [ ] regular medication, kept ahead
   [ ] torches and spare batteries  [ ] important documents, dry
   [ ] cash in small notes          [ ] hygiene and sanitation items
   [ ] whistle, multi-tool, tape    [ ] warm spare clothing, keys

   Kept together, reviewed in season, ready to take up in the dark.

The grab-bag: leaving in a hurry

The emergency kit assumes the household stays put. But some emergencies, a fire, a flood, a gas leak, an order to evacuate, mean leaving the home at once, with no time to gather provisions and perhaps only minutes' warning. For that the household keeps a second, smaller pack: a grab-bag, a single bag of the bare essentials, packed in advance and kept by the door, that any member can pick up in seconds on the way out. Sheltering and evacuation are the subject of a later lesson; the grab-bag is the standing answer to the part that cannot wait.

It is small by design, a rucksack or holdall light enough for one person to carry without difficulty, because a bag too heavy to move is no use in a hurry. Into it go the things most needed for the first day or two away from home: a little water and some ready-to-eat food, a torch and a small radio, a few days of any vital medication and a small first-aid kit, copies of the key documents, a reserve of cash in small notes, a phone power bank and charging cable, warm and waterproof spare clothing, basic hygiene items, and a few comforts for any children. Much of this duplicates, in miniature, what the larger kit holds. That duplication is deliberate, so grabbing the bag never depends on first unpacking the main kit. Each member who can carry one may have their own; for the youngest and the elderly, an adult carries theirs. Pack it once, keep it by the most-used door, and check it when the household checks the rest of its readiness.

   THE GRAB-BAG (small, by the door, ready to seize)

   [ ] water and ready-to-eat food   [ ] vital medication, a few days
   [ ] torch + small radio           [ ] small first-aid kit
   [ ] copies of key documents       [ ] cash in small notes
   [ ] power bank + charging cable    [ ] warm, waterproof spare clothes
   [ ] basic hygiene items            [ ] comforts for the children

   Light enough to carry. One per person who can. Picked up in seconds.

A simple household plan

Supplies are only half of readiness; the other half is a shared understanding of what the household will do. That is the household plan. It need not be elaborate or written, though writing the key points down and keeping a copy in the emergency kit does much good. It needs only to be agreed in advance, so the household acts together rather than at cross purposes when an emergency arrives. A handful of questions make up its heart.

First, how will the household get warnings? Know how official information and alerts reach the home, by radio and by the means the authorities use, and that the battery radio in the kit is the fallback when the usual channels fail. Recognising warnings and finding trustworthy information is the subject of a later lesson; the plan here is simply to know where the household will turn.

Second, where will members meet? If members are apart when something happens, or the home must be left, an agreed meeting point saves anxiety and confusion. Agree two: one just outside the home, such as a known spot at the end of the street, for an emergency like a fire that empties the house; and one further off, known and reachable, for when the whole area must be left.

Third, how will members contact one another? The mobile network may be down and the contacts on a dead phone unreachable, so the plan needs a simple, low-technology fallback: the key numbers written on paper, kept in the kit and in each grab-bag, and an understanding that messages may have to wait. Particularly useful is an out-of-area contact: a relative or friend living well away from the household, whom every member knows to call or message, so that when local lines are jammed but a distant one works, the household passes word of who is safe and where through that single agreed point.

Fourth, who looks after whom? This deserves to be taken slowly, because it is where a good plan does its kindest work. Think through, by name, the very young, who cannot act for themselves and need an adult assigned to each; the elderly, who may move slowly, tire quickly, or depend on routines an emergency disrupts; the unwell, in particular anyone who depends on regular medication, on a medical device that needs power, or on treatment that cannot be paused, whose needs must be written into the plan rather than recalled in the panic; and anyone with a disability, whose particular requirements, for mobility, communication, or assistance, the plan must meet plainly and without fuss. Settle who helps each person do each thing the emergency will demand, from leaving the house to keeping warm to taking medication on time. And do not forget the pets: who takes the animal, who carries its food, water, and a lead or carrier, where it can go if the household must shelter somewhere that will not admit it.

The plan should also reach beyond the front door, to a neighbour known to need checking on, an elderly person living alone, a household with a new baby or an unwell member, or one who can be relied on for help. As the first lesson taught, the neighbourhood is the strongest safety net most people will ever have. Helping others well is the subject of a later lesson; the household plan is where it begins.

Maintaining readiness

A store assembled once and forgotten is not readiness; it is a comforting memory that will fail on the day it is tested, when the batteries are flat, the medicine is out of date, and the water has gone stale. Readiness is a thing kept, not a thing done, and the work of keeping it is light if it is regular. The discipline has three parts: check, rotate, and review.

Checking means looking the stores over to confirm they are still good: that the torches light and the radio works, that the batteries and power banks hold their charge, that nothing has leaked, spoiled, or been quietly borrowed, and that the carbon-monoxide and smoke alarms still sound. Rotating is the habit already met under food and water: using the stores in the ordinary course and replacing them, front to back, so the tins, packets, water, and above all the medication never age past their dates. Reviewing is the wider look that asks whether the plan still fits the household: a new baby, a member grown elderly or fallen ill, a pet arrived or gone, a change of address or telephone number all change what readiness must cover, and the plan should be brought up to date when they do.

A simple rhythm carries all three: a thorough check and review once or twice a year, fixed to dates the household will remember, the turn of the seasons or the change of the clocks. Tie it to the year's hazards, looking hardest at the winter provision, warm layers, bedding, and the means of warmth, as the cold season approaches. Make it a household occasion rather than one person's chore, so everyone knows afresh where things are kept and what the plan says. An hour or two, twice a year, is the whole price of keeping a home ready, and the difference between provisions that merely exist and provisions that will actually serve.

In Practice: An Evening's Readiness in a Coastal Town

A member of the Principality, living with their family in a small coastal town, decides on an ordinary evening to make the household ready, and the whole of it takes a weekend, not a fortune.

They begin with water, the heaviest and most important: a row of clean, dated containers filled from the tap and stowed low in a cool cupboard, three litres a person a day for the four of them across a week, the better part of ninety litres, with a little extra for the dog. They build the food store from what the household already eats, tins and dried staples and long-life things, enough to feed four for a week at a couple of thousand calories a head, a manual tin opener tied to the shelf, and a rule of putting new shopping to the back so nothing ages. They confirm warm layers, hats, gloves, and socks for each of them and spare blankets enough to keep the small room off the hall tolerable, and settle that this would be the room. They set a torch per person and a bag of spare batteries where they can be found in the dark, charge two power banks and a battery radio, and agree the candles stay in the drawer unless the torches fail.

Into the emergency kit go the rest: the radio and its spares, a first-aid kit and a week's margin of the medication one of them takes, the family's papers dry in a waterproof folder, some small cash, and the hygiene and sanitation items. By the front door they hang a grab-bag, light enough to seize on the way out, holding a little water and food, a torch, copies of the key papers, a few days of the vital medicine, a power bank, warm waterproofs, and a favourite toy for the youngest, against the day a flood warning means leaving fast. Then they talk through the plan: how they will hear official news, two meeting points, one at the end of the street and one at an aunt's house inland, the key numbers written on a card in the kit and the grab-bag, the aunt agreed as the out-of-area contact everyone will ring to say they are safe, and who, plainly, sees to the two children, to the grandmother whose tablets must be kept up, and to the elderly neighbour two doors along. They mark the calendar to look it over again when the clocks change. Nothing about the weekend is dramatic. At the end of it the home is ready for a week on its own, ready to leave in a hurry if it must, and ready to be kept ready, which is exactly the calm that readiness is for.

Check Your Understanding

1. Why does household readiness aim at being self-reliant for about a week, and what are the two common readiness horizons? Explain why three days is treated as the firm minimum and a week as the target, and why a prepared household is described as doing something useful for the whole nation rather than merely looking after itself.
2. Set out what a household should provide for water, food, warmth, and light and power, giving the working rule of about three litres of drinking water per person per day and how it scales across three days and a week. For warmth, state the one-warm-room principle and the carbon-monoxide rule, and explain why that rule admits no exceptions.
3. Distinguish the household emergency kit from the grab-bag, and describe what each holds and why both are kept. What questions should a simple household plan answer, including the out-of-area contact and the needs of the very young, the elderly, the unwell, those with disabilities, and pets? Why must the contact plan include a low-technology fallback, and what does maintaining readiness through the year involve?

Reflection (write a short paragraph): This lesson is one you can act on directly at home. Take an honest inventory of your own household against it: your water, measured against the three-litre rule; your food store and whether you rotate it; your means of staying warm and lighting the dark; your emergency kit and your grab-bag; and your household plan, including who looks after whom and your out-of-area contact. Where are you already ready, and where are the gaps? Choose two or three things you could put right over a single weekend, decide when in the year you will check and rotate it all, and consider whether there is a neighbour your household's plan should include.

Summary

• Aim at self-reliance for about a week, because help cannot reach everyone at once and rightly goes first to those in gravest need; a prepared household eases the whole nation's burden and may have something to spare for a neighbour. The first three days are the firm minimum, about a week the target, both met with modest, ordinary provisions, not a hoard.
• Store drinking water at about three litres per person per day, more for hygiene, heat, the very young, the unwell, and animals: roughly nine litres a head for three days and twenty to twenty-five for a week, the better part of ninety litres for a household of four. Keep it in clean, dated, closed containers, cool and dark, and refresh it.
• Keep a week's food, around two thousand to two and a half thousand calories a person a day, needing no refrigeration and little or no cooking, by category (tinned, dried staples, spreads, snacks, extras, and a manual tin opener), made of what the household eats and rotated front-to-back, with babies, special diets, allergies, and animals provided for.
• Stay warm by keeping body heat with layers, hats, gloves, socks, and bedding, heating one small room, and using only heating designed and vented for indoor use; never run any fuel-burning stove, barbecue, generator, engine, or unvented heater indoors, because carbon monoxide is invisible, odourless, and deadly. A battery carbon-monoxide alarm is a cheap safeguard. These principles are reinforced by the Cold-Weather Operations and Survival course.
• Provide light with a torch per person, lanterns, and spare batteries, power banks kept charged, and candles only as a carefully guarded last resort. Assemble an emergency kit (a mains-independent radio, first-aid, a margin of regular medication, important documents kept dry and copied, small cash, hygiene and sanitation items, and small useful tools), kept together in one known place and reviewed; and keep a small grab-bag by the door, ready to seize if the household must leave in a hurry. First aid is taught in the Combat First Aid course and hygiene in the Field Health, Hygiene, and Sanitation course.
• Agree a simple household plan: how the household gets warnings; where members meet, near and far; how they contact one another, with a low-technology fallback and an out-of-area contact; and who looks after whom, naming the very young, the elderly, the unwell, those with disabilities, and the pets so no one is left behind. Let it reach beyond the front door to neighbours. Then keep it all current, checking, rotating, and reviewing once or twice a year, because readiness is a thing kept, not done once. The treatment of water and the safe use of heat are carried into Coping Without Services and certified in person.

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