National Risk Register/National Resilience Update - Nothing new to us.

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Had a wierd recorded message phone call from the water company thanking me for my patience while the water was out.
Now most of the postcodes mentioned were ex postcodes and the ta ones were not mine. I've not heard anything about water outages on any news channels at all, and no phone calls warning me about water outage.. very odd.

This actually shows how important it is to have water stored in case of a problem..
I still have no idea what caused the water outage. Anyone in Exeter or Taunton postcode areas affected? Any idea what the problem was?
Theee are warnings of possible cyber attacks on our creaking water infrastructure .
Are we all prepared for this?. I know round here, many are not, and just don't seem to care.
No warnings or impacts here in TA4.
 
pee ess: @HorseGuy , if you are only getting 5 minutes of listening time from a full wind, your radio generator has a problem. A full wind should give 35 to 40 minutes listening time on an original.
I've just tested my Bayliss radio again. Turns out it does work fine. It was just me being a prat and not winding it up far enough. :D
 
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Interesting that with such a strong preparedness presence on this forum no one has mentioned their LRF or it’s work.

We need to do a lot more work on publicising (without panicking people.)
 
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Local Resilience Forum.

There is quite a lot of preparedness going on.

Edited to add:
Respondents to the survey seemed to suggest that a fair proportion of communities are doing something about preparedness. That needs work.

We have just had a power cut.
I performed the ultimate magic to reestablish power . I got out my Kelly Kettle and started to make breakfast. The Cosmos allowed me to make coffee and just start preparing porridge before switching electricity back on.

The local petrol/diesel pumps failed!!!
 
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I was trying to push the National Emergency Briefing here but it got pulled. I know Packham is divisive, but I really dont think people should dismiss an entire subject because their opinion of one man presents a hurdle they cannot move past. The subject matter and highly educated specialists in their fields that were chosen to speak all had some very sobering facts to present.
Not sure why the National Emergency Briefing would have been pulled - if you read the key points, there is indeed some useful background information in it. Packham, on the other hand... well the less said.

My personal issue with it is that, whilst informative, it runs the risk of generating complacency. People watch the film, think "oh, that sounds bad" and then do nothing. Instead, I think people need to be instructed - "thou shalt have 3 days food" etc. I think we run the risk of accepting how complacent the vast majority of people are - they have never had to consider many of the challenges that people with a prep or bushcraft mindset of experience take for granted.
 
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Interesting that with such a strong preparedness presence on this forum no one has mentioned their LRF or it’s work.

We need to do a lot more work on publicising (without panicking people.)

Worth checking you local LRF out - ours is useless. It only seems interested in the village centre. I forgot they sent out some stuff several years back and produced 'a plan' but when we had the big storm 2 years ago we heard nothing from anyone even though power was out for over 30 hours and road blocked one end for 4 days.

I've also been dealing a lot with various hospitals, council and various NHS people for my Mum. I can only hope in an emergency things are much better than they are in day to day goings on. Otherwise if it's not on a checklist it'll not get done, if it's on a checklist but pointless or even harmful it must get done and it'll always be someone else's job or a different organisation, trust or whatever.
 
Worth checking you local LRF out -
I would, if we had one! NI has EPGs, Emergency Planning Groups which are executive/senior civil service QUANGOs to all intents and purposes. Public input is so limited as to be virtually non existent. I believe they once asked farmers in the border counties their opinions about localised flooding.
 
Well well. Our LRF looks pretty damned effective.
It’s not a ruddy battle group, it’s a communications network.

With respect:
I don’t see a thirty hour power cut as an emergency unless you are using something like a dialyser - in which case you already have a plan for power cuts.
Our electricity comes through a string. We’ve had a five day cut before now. (Quite a while ago)

Road blocked at one end for four whole days????
My village is cut in two by the river Tern. The Village bridge is currently closed for repairs - a total of 13 weeks but it will probably be a couple of weeks better than that. The work is progressing well. My son now lives fifteen minutes further away than he did last month. We’ll cope. The work has to be done.

It’s so easy to criticise a government initiative but it IS in place.

What can each of us do to strengthen it? What are you offering to the situation. Does your immediate location/parish/“block” etc. have an sms group network?

If you are whinging at least whinge to the LRF as well as here and give them feedback.

Edited to add:
In the fifty years that I’ve lived in this village absolutely nothing has happened that might warrant a major coordinated deployment by all the agencies that make up the LRF.

@Broch
The LDV / Home Guard did a good job with very little resource and superannuated leadership.
 
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My personal issue with it is that, whilst informative, it runs the risk of generating complacency. People watch the film, think "oh, that sounds bad" and then do nothing.

The point of the NEB is for local towns and villages to organize a showing in a local hall, inviting their local councillors and MP. After the film has finished, there is a discussion and questions. This is the useful bit, because community engaging with each other, and their local councillors and MPs is absolutely key to moving the importance of the subject to Parliament and implementing change.
 
Well well. Our LRF looks pretty damned effective.
It’s not a ruddy battle group, it’s a communications network.

Lucky you. I posted an example of a real event these things should cater for, or at least be used as a dry run and in our case it failed.

You say it's a communications network but our LRF seems to refer to various web sites which most could not gain access to as we had an area wide power outage which took out the mobile networks. (One of the reasons I'm not keen on the idea of SMS messaging in such cases, not only is there no or poor reception in the most at risk areas but it also seems very unreliable when needed most).

Our group failed at the first hurdle and reading through the documents a few years later they've not been updated and don't seem much use.
 
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Most of the veterans I know will need some much larger kit and will fail the most basic fitness tests. I generalise obviously, some are still pretty fit, but if they are looking to recruit those whom are now in there 40/50’s they’ll struggle to get many ‘ready to go’. Most folk, myself included struggle to keep the level fitness required to do proper soldiering.
Maybe they should look at training civvy (and ex military) for support roles such as driving, logistics and medical support to front line troops or in civil emergencies.
 
That article says lots of words without saying much in terms of content regarding the scope of the ‘drill’. Could just be a war game on paper. Standard fear-mongering from one of the rags.
Paper is the only way I can see it not being a whole lot more trouble than it's worth. Perhaps an exercise in seeing how many of those involved they can actually contact?

If they actually put old boots on training grounds, there will be a Channel 4 documentary about it within a month.
 

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