Radio Stoke Features

What if you woke up one morning, turned on the radio and heard an announcement that there had been an outbreak of pandemic flu across Staffordshire and Cheshire?

What if flood water was lapping at your front door or what if there was a chemical leak and you needed to evacuate your home in the middle of the night – would you know what to do?

What about your family and friends who live away – maybe due to work or university – maybe you have elderly parents in another part of the country or a vulnerable neighbour down the street - could they cope during an emergency?

We cannot prepare for every single eventuality but there are some common problems that might result from flooding or fire – power failures, loss of water supply or loss of communications like telephones – for which we can prepare.

Local experts

Over three days – between Monday January 12th and Wednesday January 14th, we’ll be joined by experts from our Local Emergency Planning Departments, Police, Fire, Medical and Utility Services as well the Environment Agency and Met Office – who will provide you with some simple measures that could help you cope with the risk of flooding, fire, chemical leaks or even pandemic flu.

These experts will explain some of the things they can do to help you during a time of crisis and what measures you can take now to help yourself. They will also explain some of the things they cannot do.

The information isn’t rocket science – many of the messages we’ve heard time and time before – like checking the batteries in our smoke alarms. However, as we all know, it’s one thing to hear a message and another to act upon it.

Interactive campaign

‘What If…’ is an interactive campaign – we want to hear about your experiences and how you’ve coped with disaster in the past – we can all learn from experience.

On this page there are links to a quick checklist so you can see how well you’re prepared to cope with an emergency (see weblinks at top right of this page).

There are also links to a few PDF documents providing some of the information available about preparing things like grab bags in case you need to get out of your home in a hurry.