How to prepare and what to do in bad weather
- The Ready Scotland website www.ready.scot
- Call 105 in the event of a power cut
- Call 999 in an emergency for police, fire, ambulance or coastguard
- Sign up to the Scottish and Southern Energy Priority Services Register here, it provides extra help and support during a power cut
How to prepare for bad weather or flooding
- Sign up to Floodline: 0345 988 1188
- think about who will care for you and pets
- have a plan where you’ll go if bad weather or flooding happens
- where the main electricity and gas switches are
- Keep a list of useful phone numbers – friends, family, insurance emergency helpline, local council, Floodline (0345 988 1188),
- create an emergency plan from www.ready.scot – remember to keep the plan handy in case you need it in a hurry
- Have a battery radio and torch, and spare batteries for both
- Prepare to move into one room
- Extra duvets, blankets, clothing
How to prepare and what to do in an emergency
- Basic building materials to help protect your property eg. sandbags, flood barriers
- Prepare to move into one room
- Extra duvets, blankets, clothing
- Prepare a grab bag of essentials if you need to evacuate including an up-to-date home inventory listing your fixtures, essential items such as your insurance documents, a torch, a wind-up or battery radio, warm clothing and blankets, a first aid kit and any prescription medicine, and bottled water and non-perishable foods.
- Copy of your flood insurance policy number
What to do in an emergency
- Check social media by police and Aberdeen City Council, or listen to local radio stations, for updates
- Call 105 in the event of a power cut
- Call 999 in an emergency for police, fire, ambulance or coastguard
Community Resilience Groups
It is recommended communities think about these questions to help your community group in conversations about resilience.
Assess
- What are the main risks in your area and what might be the impacts on your community? Find out about your Community Risk Register. Does this match with your community risk assessment? What else is important to those around you?
- What assets are available in your community? This could be buildings for use as a community hub during an emergency; other community groups, social enterprises and businesses who could work together, or people with specialist skills or equipment.
Prevent
- What can you and your group do to manage or lessen risk or to be less vulnerable?
- You may not be able to prevent emergencies but raising awareness of household readiness can make the impact much less serious. Could you engage with your local authority over flood prevention or road and path access in severe weather?
- Who do you need to talk to about key issues? e.g. local authority, an environmental agency, or emergency services, etc.
Prepare
- What does your group need to do to prepare for an emergency? e.g. support vulnerable residents with shopping, have a community store with snow shovels etc.
- Share this Household Emergency Plan with members of your community and encourage them to complete it, online or as printed copies.
- Identify all the networks and groups of people who are willing to help. Build relationships with those groups now so that you can coordinate with each other when an emergency occurs.
- Be aware – sign up to alerts or social media from trusted sources such as Flood Alerts, Ready Scotland, Scottish Government or NHS Scotland.
Respond
- Does everyone (the community and responder agencies) know what your group will do to support the response - when and how?
- When responding to a disruption in your community, make sure you are communicating with other local community groups, and especially with any formal responders such as your local authority’s emergency planning team.
- Can you operate safely and are you insured?
- Can you communicate and coordinate with everyone who needs to know?
Recover
- If your community has been affected by an emergency, how will your group (and other groups) support residents to recover? What charities or agencies can help?
- How would your group learn lessons? What will you do differently next time there is an emergency?
Ready Scotland has created resources, guides and templates to help your community create their own resilience plans when you're ready to move forward.