How do I plan for an evacuation from my home?

Households are evacuated in the UK far more often than people assume — flooding, a gas leak in the street, a fire in a neighbouring property, a chemical incident, a wildfire, an unexploded device. What almost every account of it has in common is that the notice was between five minutes and an hour, and that people who had thought about it in advance left calmly with what they needed, and people who had not left with a phone and no charger.

Safety

What you'll need

• A grab bag or a labelled box, kept near the exit
• A written plan with phone numbers, not only in a phone
• Copies or photographs of key documents
• Pet carriers, and a plan for animals (optional)
• A power bank and cables
• A spare set of keys held by someone outside the household (optional)

Step by step

1. Find and label the three shut-offs now.The internal stopcock, usually under the kitchen sink. The gas emergency control valve, usually at the meter, turned so the handle lies across the pipe. The consumer unit main switch. Label all three, and show everyone in the house.
2. Decide where you would go, and have a second option.A relative or friend outside the immediate area, and a fallback further away in case the same event affects both. The council will open a rest centre in a large incident, but having somewhere of your own is better.
3. Agree a single out-of-area contact.One person, ideally in another town, whom everyone in the family rings or messages to say where they are. Local phone networks get congested and people scatter; one hub is more reliable than everyone ringing everyone.
4. Build the grab bag and put it where you can reach it in the dark.Medicines and a repeat prescription list, spare glasses, phone chargers and a power bank, some cash, a torch, a change of clothes, toiletries, and copies of key documents. By the front door or at the bottom of the stairs, not in the loft.
5. Photograph or scan the documents that matter.Passports, birth certificates, insurance policies, mortgage or tenancy details, bank details, prescriptions, pet microchip and vaccination records. Stored in a cloud account you can reach from any device, plus a paper copy in the bag.
6. Plan for the pets specifically.Carriers accessible, leads by the door, a few days of food, and knowledge of which friends or kennels would take them. Rest centres often cannot accept animals, and people refuse to evacuate rather than leave a pet — that is the real risk.
7. Photograph every room while everything is intact.Ten minutes with a phone, walking through the house with the cupboards open. It is the basis of any contents claim, and it is impossible to reconstruct later.
8. Work out how you would leave, and by which route.Two ways out of the house, two ways out of the street, and which direction is uphill or away from a river. Keep the car fuelled or charged above a quarter in winter, and parked facing out where you can.
9. Practise turning the utilities off, once.Actually do it. A stopcock that has not been turned in ten years is usually seized, and finding that out on a dry Sunday is far better than in the dark with water coming in.
10. Think about who might need help.Anyone in the household who cannot move quickly, and neighbours who live alone or are elderly. Agree in advance who would knock on whose door. Register anyone vulnerable on the Priority Services Register with the energy and water suppliers.
11. Review it once a year.Medicines change, phones change, children grow up and pets arrive. A plan written five years ago and never opened is not much better than none.

Tips

• Keep a printed card with the numbers for where you live — insurer's emergency line, the power-cut and gas emergency lines, Floodline or the Flooding Incident Line, the out-of-area contact, the vet. A dead phone takes every number with it.
• Charge the power bank on the first of the month, along with testing the smoke alarms. Both jobs take two minutes and both are useless when neglected.
• Keep a spare set of house keys with someone nearby and a note of your car registration and insurance details in the bag. Both come up more often than expected.
• If anyone in the house depends on powered medical equipment, work out now what a 12-hour interruption looks like and tell the network operator via the Priority Services Register.
• Tell the out-of-area contact that they are the out-of-area contact. It sounds obvious and it is routinely skipped.

Common mistakes

• Keeping the plan and the documents only on a phone — A phone in an evacuation is often flat, lost or left behind. Paper copies in the bag and a cloud account you can reach from a borrowed device cover both failures.
• Storing the grab bag in the loft or the garage — Wherever it is has to be reachable in two minutes, in the dark, possibly with water on the floor. Near the exit or at the bottom of the stairs.
• Turning off the gas when you can smell gas — Operating anything near a gas leak, including a valve, risks a spark. If you can smell gas, leave, then ring 0800 111 999 from outside.
• Delaying to pack more — Evacuation notice is measured in minutes. The bag exists so that the decision has already been made and you leave on the first instruction rather than the third.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask