Australian Disaster Preparedness: The Complete Guide

Q: Which numbers should I actually have written down?

000 for fire, police, ambulance. 132 500 for SES — flood and storm. healthdirect 1800 022 222 for medical advice that is not an emergency (Victoria: Nurse-on-Call 1300 60 60 24). Your insurer's 24-hour claims line. Your out-of-area contact. On paper.

Survival Guru·August 24, 2026

A kitchen bench with an emergency plan on the fridge, battery radio, torch and stored water

Australia does not have a disaster season. It has four of them, they overlap, and which one is coming for you depends almost entirely on your postcode.

The good news is that one plan covers all of it. The hazards look wildly different — a fire front, a flooded causeway, a cyclone, a week of 40°C with no power — but the preparation underneath is about 80% shared. Water, documents, medication, a way to hear warnings, a decision made before the day, and everyone in the household knowing where to meet.

The less good news is that most households have none of that. Roughly half own no emergency supplies at all, and only around 39% have any kind of plan. Not because people are careless — because the advice they encounter is either terrifyingly vague (“be prepared”) or written for a subculture they do not belong to.

This guide is the specific version. Actual triggers, actual numbers, actual dollar figures, and the failure modes that turn a bad day into a catastrophic one.

The 10-minute version

Write two triggers for your hazard, today. One “get ready”, one “go now”, both tied to something you can observe — a fire danger rating, a flood warning class, a cyclone category. Put them on the fridge. Deciding late is the single deadliest habit in Australian disasters.
Store 9 litres of water per person (3 litres per person per day, three days) and scan your documents to the cloud. That is one supermarket shop and thirty minutes, and it covers the two things people most regret not having.
Get a battery radio and a power bank. When the network and the power go, ABC Local Radio is the designated emergency broadcaster and your phone is a torch with a two-hour battery.

Which hazard is actually yours?

Preparing for everything is how people prepare for nothing. Start with what your address genuinely faces.

Hazard	Where it bites hardest	Peak season	The thing that kills people
Bushfire	Anywhere with bush, grass or scrub within a few hundred metres — including outer suburbs	Oct–Mar (southern), earlier in Qld/NT	Leaving too late, and sheltering in an unprepared house
Flood	Anywhere with a creek, river, storm drain or low crossing	Year-round; Jan–Mar peak in the north and east	Driving into water
Cyclone	Qld, NT, WA north of about the Tropic	Nov–Apr	Going outside during the eye; flying debris; storm surge
Heatwave	Everywhere, worst in western Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and inland	Dec–Feb	Heat, alone, indoors, elderly, often with no aircon or no power to run it
Extended blackout	Everywhere, usually caused by one of the above	Storm season	Medication that needed refrigeration, heat with no cooling, and food eaten after it turned

Look your address up on your state service’s map rather than guessing: NSW RFS, CFA (Vic), QFES, SA CFS, TFS, DFES (WA), ACT ESA, NT PFES. Your risk is often higher than you think and lower than you fear, and either way it is knowable in five minutes.

Step 1: Set your triggers

This is the whole ball game, so it goes first.

On Black Saturday in 2009, 173 people died in Victoria. When the fatalities were mapped, 113 had died inside houses, 27 outside, and 16 in or near cars. Earlier fires had killed mostly people outdoors, defending property or fleeing at the last minute. The shift told investigators something uncomfortable: people were sheltering in houses that had not been prepared to be sheltered in.

The Royal Commission’s conclusion is worth quoting on its merits — leaving early, before there is a fire, is the safest option, and staying to defend a well-prepared, defendable home is a sound choice in less severe fires for those who are mentally and physically able. The failure was not that people chose wrong between two valid options. It was that most had chosen neither, and were waiting when the choice expired.

So do not plan to decide. Decide now, and let an observable thing tell you when to execute.

Fire danger ratings, and what each one means for you

Australia’s ratings run Moderate → High → Extreme → Catastrophic (plus no rating for benign days).

Rating	Official meaning	Your pre-committed action
Moderate	Plan and prepare	Normal life. Know where the plan is
High	Prepare to act	Go-bag accessible, car above half a tank, phone charged
Extreme	Take action now to protect life and property	Bag in the car, valuables and documents loaded, plan is live. If your plan is to leave, leave now
Catastrophic	For your survival, leave bushfire risk areas	Leave the night before or early that morning. No reassessment on the day

At Catastrophic, well-prepared homes are not a reliable defence. The advice is not “consider leaving”. It is leave.

Flood triggers

Australian flood warnings escalate Minor → Moderate → Major, and the killer is not the flood peak — it is the crossing.

Never drive into floodwater. Not slowly, not in a 4WD. Water moving at moderate speed can shift a vehicle in depths that look trivial from the driver’s seat, and you cannot see whether the road under it still exists.
Trigger: the first Moderate warning for your catchment means move vehicles to high ground and pack. A Major warning, or any evacuation order, means go — not after one more load.
SES is 132 500 for flood and storm. 000 if life is in danger.

Cyclone triggers

Cyclone advice comes with its own timeline: Watch (roughly 48 hours out), Warning (24 hours), then the impact itself.

Watch: yard cleared of anything that flies, water and fuel topped up, shelter room chosen.
Warning: shelter room stocked, everyone inside, plan closed.
During: the eye is not the end. The wind returns from the opposite direction, and people are killed going outside in the lull.

Heat and blackout triggers

Trigger: a forecast of three consecutive days over 35°C, or any day over 40°C, activates the heat plan — cooling, hydration, and a check-in call on anyone elderly or unwell who lives alone.
Heat and blackout arrive together more often than people expect, because heat drives demand and storms take out lines. Plan them as one event.

Step 2: The document set

The most common regret after a fire or flood is not an object. It is paperwork.

Scan or photograph all of it, put it in encrypted cloud storage, and put a copy on a USB in whatever bag you would grab:

Driver’s licence, passports, birth and marriage certificates
Insurance policies — including the policy number and the 24-hour claims line
Prescriptions and a current medication list with doses
Bank and superannuation details
Lease, title or mortgage documents
Photographs of every room, with cupboards and wardrobes open
A short video walk-through of the house, narrated

That last pair does most of the work in a claim. Insurers settle on evidence, and after an event you cannot generate evidence of what you owned. Ten minutes with a phone now is worth thousands later.

Step 3: Water, and the maths nobody does

Plan on 3 litres per person per day for drinking, minimum, and more in heat or if anyone is pregnant, unwell or breastfeeding. For three days, that is 9 litres a person.

Household	3 days	What that looks like
1 person	9 L	Two 4.5 L bottles
2 people	18 L	Three 6 L bottles
Family of 4	36 L	Six 6 L bottles — one shop, about $15
Family of 4, one week	84 L	Two 40 L drums or a bathtub bladder

Add washing and toilet water on top; that can be non-potable, and a full bathtub covers it if you fill it before the event.

If you have to use uncertain water, the treatment methods and their limits are covered in How to Find and Purify Water — the short version is that boiling to a rolling boil is the most reliable single method, and most filters do not remove viruses.

Step 4: The food safety clock

This is the most immediately useful table on the site, because a blackout happens to everyone eventually and almost nobody knows the numbers.

Fridge — a closed fridge holds temperature for roughly 4 to 6 hours. What matters is time above 5°C:

Time above 5°C	Verdict
Under 2 hours	Safe. Keep it
2 to 4 hours	Use it immediately — do not put it back
Over 4 hours	Throw it out

Freezer — kept shut, a full freezer holds about 48 hours; a half-full one about 24. Food at 0°C or below, or still showing ice crystals, can be refrozen or used. Above 0°C, discard.

Three rules that follow from this:

Write down the time the power went off. Every judgement afterwards depends on it, and nobody remembers accurately six hours later.
Keep the doors shut. Every look costs you time you cannot get back.
A cheap fridge thermometer ends the argument. Temperature is the only real test; smell is not.

Step 5: Communications when the network fails

Assume the mobile network degrades. In big events it does — towers lose power, backhaul fails, and everyone in the area tries to call at once.

What still works, roughly in order of reliability:

A battery or wind-up radio. ABC Local Radio is the emergency broadcaster. This is the one piece of gear with no substitute.
SMS. Texts queue and get through gaps that defeat voice calls.
An out-of-area contact. One relative in another state who everyone reports in to. Local networks congest; distant ones do not.
A charged power bank, or two. A 10,000 mAh bank is roughly two to three phone charges.
UHF radio for a property or convoy, and a satellite messenger or PLB if you are genuinely remote. Costs and use cases are compared in Comms Gear.

Write the plan on paper. A contact list that exists only in a phone is not a plan, and the phone is the thing most likely to be dead, wet or left behind.

Step 6: The kit

Full builds live in The 72-Hour Kit and Bushfire Go-Bag. The core, condensed:

Water (9 L per person) and three days of food that needs no cooking
Torch — headlamp preferred, hands free — plus spare batteries in one standard size across all your devices
Battery radio
First aid kit, and a week of every prescription medication
P2 masks — one per person, for smoke and for cleanup
Sturdy shoes, long cotton clothing, work gloves
Phone, power bank, charging cables
Cash in small notes. EFTPOS goes down with the power
Copies of documents, on paper and on USB
Nappies, formula, pet food, litter — whatever your specific household cannot improvise

What actually goes wrong

People wait. It is the first failure at every scale, and it is the reason triggers exist. Waiting converts a safe departure into a dangerous one.

They drive into water. Flood deaths in Australia are dominated by vehicles. The depth that floats a car is much less than drivers estimate, and the road surface under the water may already be gone.

They shelter in a house that was never prepared for it. Staying is a valid strategy only with the preparation, the equipment, the water supply and the physical capacity to do it. Without those, it is not a strategy.

They go outside during the eye of a cyclone. The calm is the middle, not the end.

Their plan lives in one person’s head. That person is at work, unreachable, or the one in hospital. Write it down and say it out loud to everyone who lives there.

They forget who cannot self-rescue. Anyone elderly, disabled, medication-dependent, pregnant, very young, or without a car needs their part of the plan solved specifically — see Preparing an Elderly Relative’s Home.

They never rehearse. The first run always finds something broken: expired medication in the bag, dead torch batteries, document scans on a laptop still inside the house.

What it costs

Tier	Spend	Contents
Free	$0, ~90 min	Written plan with two triggers; contacts and meeting point on paper; document scans in cloud storage; photo and video inventory of the house; bathtub and bottles filled when a warning is issued
Solid	~$120–200	9 L water per person, battery radio, headlamp plus spares, 10,000 mAh power bank, basic first aid kit, P2 masks, three days of no-cook food, $200 cash, fridge thermometer
Comfortable	~$400–700	The above plus a proper first aid kit, 40 L water storage with rotation, camp stove and fuel, esky and ice bricks, jerry can of fuel, two weeks of food, spare medication, a second power bank or a small solar panel

The free tier prevents more harm than the other two combined. Objects are the easy part; the plan is what people skip.

The drill: two hours, once

Twenty minutes. Look up your actual hazard on your state service’s site. Write down which of the four applies to your address.
Twenty minutes. Write your two triggers on one page. Get ready at this; go at that. Fridge door.
Twenty minutes. Photograph every room with cupboards open. Film a walk-through. Upload it.
Twenty minutes. Scan the document set. Cloud plus USB.
Twenty minutes. Fill and label water. Nine litres per person, dated.
Twenty minutes. Walk the plan with the household. Where do we meet if the house is gone? Who calls the out-of-area contact? Who grabs the pets? Who grabs Nan?

Then put a recurring calendar reminder for the same weekend next year. Rotate water, check batteries, re-scan anything that expired.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most important thing to do first?

Write two triggers and stick them on the fridge. Late decisions cause more deaths than missing equipment, and fixing that costs nothing.

How much water do I really need?

Three litres per person per day for drinking, minimum three days — 9 litres each. A family of four needs about 36 litres, which is one supermarket shop. Store washing and toilet water separately, and fill the bath when a warning is issued.

How long will my food last in a blackout?

A closed fridge holds about 4 to 6 hours. Once food has been above 5°C for more than four hours, throw it out; between two and four hours, use it immediately. A full freezer holds about 48 hours, half-full about 24. Write down when the power went off.

Is it ever right to stay and defend against a bushfire?

It can be, in less severe fires, if the house is genuinely prepared and defendable and you are physically and mentally able — that was the Royal Commission’s own finding. It is not a default, it is not a decision to make on the day, and at a Catastrophic rating the advice is to leave regardless. The decision framework is in Leave or Stay?.

What if I rent, or live in an apartment?

You cannot modify the building, so your plan is about documents, medication, water, and getting out early. Both cases have their own article: Bushfire Plan for Renters and Apartments and Blackout Plan for Apartments.

Which numbers should I actually have written down?

000 for fire, police, ambulance. 132 500 for SES — flood and storm. healthdirect 1800 022 222 for medical advice that is not an emergency (Victoria: Nurse-on-Call 1300 60 60 24). Your insurer’s 24-hour claims line. Your out-of-area contact. On paper.