Preparedness guide
Be ready for the first 72 hours.
Why three days matters, what to prepare before the lights go out, and how to keep everyone safe and calm until they come back on.
Why 72 hours matters
After a major outage, repairs focus on the wider grid first — hospitals, transport, whole neighbourhoods — before individual homes. Most cuts are fixed in hours, but storms, floods and infrastructure failures can stretch recovery to days. Emergency planners' advice is simple: be able to look after yourself for at least 72 hours, because that's usually how long the gap lasts when it matters most.
- the resilience window emergency planners recommend
- 72 hours
- drinking water needed per person, per day
- 2–3 litres
- essentials packed into every Beready4box
- 40+
Outage preparedness, in three stages
Stage 1
Before the outage
The best time to prepare is while the lights are still on. These five habits make an outage far easier to ride out.
Know your home
Find your fuse box, water stopcock and torch locations tonight — in daylight, without hunting. Show everyone in the house where they are.
Store water and food
Store water and shelf-stable food: aim for 2–3 litres per person per day, plus food that needs no cooking. Check and rotate them once a year.
Charge everything
Keep phones and power banks topped up, especially when storms are forecast. One charged phone can be a radio, a light and a lifeline.
Plan for light and warmth
Plan for light and warmth: battery lanterns are safer than candles, and a thermal blanket per person beats a pile of duvets when the temperature drops.
Keep documents to hand
Keep copies of key documents — insurance, meter numbers, a list of medications — somewhere you can grab them in one motion.
Stage 2
During the outage
The power's gone. What you do in the first hour sets the tone for the whole outage.
Check on your neighbours
Check on neighbours, especially anyone elderly or living alone. It takes two minutes and it's the kind of thing communities remember.
Keep the fridge shut
Keep the fridge and freezer closed. An unopened fridge keeps food safe for around four hours; a full freezer holds its temperature much longer.
Never cook indoors
Never bring barbecues, camping stoves or generators indoors — they can fill a home with carbon monoxide in minutes. Cook and warm up outside or not at all.
Prefer torches to candles
If you must use candles, never leave them burning in a room unattended — torches and lanterns are the safer default.
Stay informed
Stay informed with a battery or wind-up radio, and ring your network provider's outage line if mobile data drops.
Stage 3
After the lights come back
When the power comes back, a little care protects everything you prepared.
Restock and check food
When it comes to food safety, be decisive: if in doubt, throw it out. Food that has warmed above fridge temperature for hours isn't worth the risk.
Follow water advice
If your water supplier issues a boil notice, follow it until they say otherwise — even if the water looks and tastes normal.
Restock the kit straight away
Restock anything you used from your kit the same week. A kit that's ready is the one that works next time.
Prepared with the whole family in mind
Preparedness isn't about fear — it's about knowing your family is looked after. A little planning turns a blackout from a crisis into an evening around the table.
Children
Children feel outages more than adults. Keep the routine — a familiar torch, a story by lantern light, snacks they recognise. Involving them in getting the box out makes it feel like an adventure, not an emergency.
Older relatives and neighbours
Check in on older relatives and neighbours. A charged phone list of numbers, a plan for who checks on whom, and a spare torch by the bed matter more than any gadget.
Medication and medical needs
Some medicines need refrigeration and some people rely on powered devices. Know which items in your home need power, know your pharmacy's number, and keep a backup plan written down.
Pets
Pets need water, warmth and reassurance too. Add a couple of days of pet food to your supplies and keep their lead and carrier where you can find them in the dark.
Ready for 72 hours, without doing it yourself.
Everything in this guide, organised into four labelled sections and packed by hand — so being ready takes minutes, not weekends.