30 Days 30 Ways: Day 3

30 Days 30 Ways: Day 3

Reading Time: 3 minutes

And I was like, I mean, this is exhausting, blogging every day!

Thankfully, NorthantsEPTeam and CRESA have done all the hard work and I don’t have to actually think about coming up with ideas, just ordering my thoughts into something vaguely logical! Blogging professionally must be really difficult!

UK Challenge 3 – Risk of Flooding? 

Take That - The FloodToday’s challenge requires me to

  1. Check to see if your home is at risk from flooding by going to the NCC Floodtoolkit website.
  2. As a bonus, have a look around the website and let us know what parts you like the best.

Unfortunately the data on the Flood Toolkit website is limited to the Northamptonshire area, but of like me you’re outside of that area you can use the Environment Agency map to check the same information.

I already knew that I was outside of the risk area for flooding from rivers and the sea, but it did reveal that I have a low risk of surface water flooding. That means that in any one year there is somewhere between 0.1% and 1% chance of being flooded.

My favourite part of the website is the Flood Library, specifically the case studies from businesses who have direct experience of flooding. It might not be the most flashy part of the website, but for me it’s the most important.

Although we like to think that we’re modern beings, actually we’re still hardwired very similarly to our ancestors whose main method of conveying important information was to turn it into a story. Stories both inform and engage because they activate both hemispheres of the brain, which also helps with retention.

Emergency planners aren’t always great at framing information in the language and style that people are receptive to. So for that reason I think its great that businesses have shared their stories. It gives the information immediate ‘relate-ability’.

USA Challenge 3 – throwback thursday, or #tbt 

We want you to share a link or picture of an event that moved you to take some sort of preparedness action.  Along with sharing the link/picture, tell us what action this event caused you to do and if that helped motivate others around you.

I’ve been involved professionally with a large number of incidents, but the one which I remember having a marked effect on me happened over 4 days in August in 2011 when London seemed to ‘loose it’. Public disorder sparked by a police shooting occurred spontaneously and was sustained for a number of days.

Near where I live a whole section of the High Street was damaged by rioting, and it was very unnerving having the police helicopter directly overhead for three consecutive evenings. It was strange seeing shops proactively boarding up at 2pm in advance of further looting that evening. It was worrying walking to and from the station in the dar, in what is usually a comparatively safe area.

I remember seeing the following footage live, and being concerned for the reporter, who makes some interesting comments which I’ll leave to speak for themselves.

Personally for me, the biggest challenge came towards the end of the day when I had to think about eating. Because shops were closing early I was unable to purchase food (at the time I shopped on a daily basis). This meant reliance of takeaways for several days, which was both expensive, unhealthy and also in high demand.

Since then I’ve made sure that I always have ingredients to make at least one meal. A frozen pizza here, a couple of cans of beans there…nothing which is massively expensive, and certainly not the 72 hours that some sources suggest.

Oh, and why that picture at the top? Well it’s a still from The Flood by Take That, and it seemed appropriate to a post about awareness of flood risk as one of the lyrics goes ‘although no-one understood, we were holding back the flood…’

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