Preparing Yourself

By being prepared you can help to look after yourself, your family and your community, leaving emergency responders free to look after those who most need assistance.

By following these simple steps, you and your family can be better prepared to cope with both minor inconveniences and more serious emergencies:

  • Find out what emergencies may affect you – Lancashire Risk Register.
  • Make a household plan. This should contain emergency contact details for your family or the people you live with, as well as details relating to your insurance and utility providers.
  • Know how to safely turn off your electricity, water and gas supplies.
  • Think about how you would look after pets.
  • Pack a grab bag of essential items that you may need if you have to leave your home at short notice.
  • Be a good neighbour – consider whether anyone in your local community might require assistance in an emergency. This could include vulnerable children/adults, older people and families with young children or pets.
  • Find out the emergency arrangements at your workplace and children’s school.
  • Learn first aid – this could give yourself life-saving skills to help your family, friends and others in an emergency.
  • Make sure you and your family know how to use 999 responsibly.

If you are not involved in the incident, but are close by or believe you may be in danger, you should:

  • Go in – Find a place of safety and close doors and windows. In some circumstances your local council may have opened a rest centre to provide a place of safety if you have no other options.
  • Stay in – Stay inside as long as it is safe to do so. You can use this time to contact your family and friends and make sure they are safe, and confirm that you are safe. Report anyone missing to the police.
  • Tune in – Local radio stations, TV and internet news sources are used by emergency responders to issue specific advice (you may want to get a wind-up radio because it wouldn’t need new batteries during a power cut). Regular updates on developments will also be shared by the emergency services on Twitter and can be found by using the hashtag #lancsalert
  • Look for signs of stress – being involved in an emergency can be mentally and emotionally difficult.
  • Help others – if you know of friends, family or neighbours who have particular vulnerabilities (either through age, ill health or disability) then consider how you could help them. It might be as simple as contacting their loved ones for them, or ensuring they have food and water.
  • Pay particular attention to children as they may feel especially insecure, confused and frightened even if they haven’t been directly involved in an emergency. These reactions can become evident sometime after the event.

Useful Links

Environment Agency
Incident hotline (freephone 24 hours)
0800 80 70 60
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National Gas Emergency Services
Gas Emergency
0800 111 999
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United Utilities
0345 6723 723
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Floodline (24 hour)
Advice and information on floods
0845 988 1188

Electricity North West
Emergency and loss of power
105
Visit Site

For more information about risks in Lancashire, how the LRF plans to deal with them and what you can do to prepare, please download this guide.