Emergency Preparedness

Apartment blackouts have their own failure modes: water stops with the pump, the lift strands people, and the standard advice about generators and barbecues is unusable.

Heat kills older Australians indoors, alone, more than any other natural hazard does anything. Here is the afternoon audit that fixes most of the risk in someone else’s house.

Mobile towers run on batteries with a finite life, so coverage degrades hours into a major event. Here is what still works, ranked by what it costs and what it actually solves.

In a school emergency the instinct is to drive there, and it is usually the worst thing a parent can do. Here are the permissions, contacts and questions to sort out while nothing is happeni…

Storms are the most common Australian disaster and the most casually treated. Here is the eight-metre powerline rule, the hail decision you have about ninety seconds to make, and who to actu…

Two things about generators get people killed: carbon monoxide, and plugging one into the house wiring. Both are avoidable, and most households would be better served spending the money else…

Water outages catch people out twice: apartments lose supply the moment the power does, and a boil water notice means more than filling the kettle. Here are the litres, the toilet plan, and…

Refrigerated medication is the quiet emergency inside a blackout. Here is the cool-chain method that keeps it in range without freezing it, and the numbers that decide when to worry.

About half of Australian households own no emergency supplies at all. This is the two hours and $100 that closes most of that gap — in order, so you can stop at any point and still be better…