Technological and Industrial failures can cripple a country within hours, and their effects be felt for weeks. Imagine a situation where there is simply no fuel at the pumps, or no electricity, or no gas or fuel for heating for a week in winter, perhaps no safe drinking water piped to your home.
Do you know how to cope? It would be easy? Like many things, it might surprise you how quickly things could become critical, yet some simple preparedness and a few essential skills and knowledge could make all the difference.
UK Contingency planning for a national electricity power outage caused by technical breakdown aims to restore power to households within 3 days, providing there is no damage to the system. Nothing is published advising us of the expected timeframe if there is a damaged system.
Industrial accidents, strikes, or simple equipment failure can all lead to failures in the supply of the utilities upon which we rely. How resilient is your business? Could you continue to heat your home in the winter, or know how to purify alternative sources of water? Heating alone could be life or death. It is estimated that for every one degree celsius drop below 18 degrees in winter an additional 8,000 people die in the UK alone (additional meaning above the annual average).
In 1998 in Victoria, Australia, the gas supplies were cut off to householders and businesses after a major accident at a gas processing plant. Returning supplies to major businesses took 10 days, with householders being reconnected over the next few days, up to two weeks.
In the UK in 2002 electricity supplies were lost to over 2 million customers in England and Wales. Most were restored within a few days, but some households were completely without power for 10 days.