UK urges households to stockpile essentials for emergencies

Bottled water: check. Torch: check. Blankets: check. UK leader Andy Burnham said Britons need to be better prepared for emergencies on Friday, when he hosted a wildfire and resilience summit. The prime minister highlighted a new government campaign that urges households to stockpile essential items in case everyday services are disrupted by anything from severe weather to cyberattacks.

The “Be Ready” initiative advises storing three days’ worth of bottled water and non-perishable food, a battery or wind-up FM radio to receive updates during outages, and banknotes and coins in case electronic payments or cash machines are disrupted. Sleeping bags, spare batteries and toiletries are also on the checklist, which was published on Thursday and is in line with guidance issued in France, Ireland and The Netherlands.

“We’re having the conversation with people about being better prepared because we’re living in a world where unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common,” said Burnham, giving storms as an example. “It is just having those supplies in the house to get you through those moments. So we are having that conversation about resilience.” Burnham was speaking after he told a meeting of fire chiefs, local leaders and experts in Liverpool, northwest England, that UK military helicopters and planes would be equipped to fight wildfires.

English firefighting services will also get additional specialist wildfire teams and lightweight personal protective equipment, with the government saying it was earmarking up to £45 million ($60 million) to counter the increase in blazes. The UK has faced widespread droughts, extreme heat and resulting wildfires each summer in recent years, in a trend scientists have blamed on man-made climate change.

One blaze in Stourbridge, central England, in August gutted 19 houses and damaged 18 others, prompting Burnham to warn on a visit there that Britain must face up to the changing climate and accelerate its transition to clean energy. The UK leader was criticised by environmental campaigners this week after approving plans to start new drilling within a controversial North Sea gas field.

Regarding the “Be Ready” campaign, which will last three years, Defence Minister Wes Streeting told the BBC late on Thursday that the government wanted “people to be alert but not alarmed”. Earlier, he said households and businesses need to ask themselves whether they are prepared if there is “disruption to essential supply chains caused by hostile state actors or terrorists”.

“How would we cope if the payment systems at the local supermarket went down?” he asked. Concerns about food security were raised this month when major French supermarket chains were hit by a cyberattack that caused their refrigerators to shoot up in temperature in hundreds of stores, forcing spoilt food to be thrown away. This week, governments and companies around the world shut down websites after artificial intelligence uncovered critical flaws in a widely used programming language called PHP that helps run about 70 percent of the world’s websites.