Stockpile water for a 3-day emergency, warns Deputy PM

FAMILIES will today be urged to stockpile three days’ worth of food and water to help build national ‘resilience’.

deputy Prime Minister oliver dowden will advise people to make contingency plans for dealing with potential emergencies such as prolonged power cuts, cyber attacks and floods.

Last year, Mr dowden said people should stock up on ‘analogue capabilities’, such as candles, torches and wind-up radios, to boost their ‘personal resilience’. Today he will go further by encouraging people to stock up with enough food and water to survive for three days without leaving their homes.

Whitehall sources insisted that the plan was not designed to create a nation of US-style survivalists. one said Mr dowden’s intervention was not meant to be ‘alarmist’ and was simply ‘common sense’ advice.

Ministers believe preparations by individual households will help take pressure off the emergency services when dealing with a crisis. They also hope it could avert the kind of panicbuying seen at the start of the Covid pandemic, when supermarket shelves were cleared of basic supplies of items such as toilet rolls.

Mr dowden has been inspired by similar preparations in countries such as Finland, which operates a ‘72-hour concept’ for coping in situations where ‘society’s services are disrupted or even discontinued’.

Finns are encouraged to stockpile food and water and to be prepared to ‘shelter indoors’ by taping up gaps in windows and ‘waiting calmly for instructions’ on the radio.

Last year, Mr dowden introduced a ‘emergency alert’ system, which allows authorities to trigger an alarm on millions of mobile phones to inform people of a potential crisis.

It comes after the Prime Minister warned last week that Britain had ‘some of its most dangerous years’ ahead and was at a security ‘crossroads’. describing the threats on the rise, rishi Sunak highlighted a new axis of anti-western states including China, russia, North Korea and Iran. Among other challenges were rising immigration and artificial intelligence.