Emergency preparedness- community

[PuddingAunt]

Looking at all the prepping threads and seeing lots of talk of keeping gas stoves, candles, power packs in homes for light/warmth/ hot food.
Wouldn't it be an idea to have a network of local shops/ cafes that in an emergency can provide hot food and water at affordable prices?
Where drinking water and off-grid power can be stored/provided safely?
(Shouldn't the water companies be responsible for preparing to provide water in an emergency anyway?)
Apologies if there is already a thread on this.

I don't think this is feasible.

Cafes and small shops will not have the space to store water for anything other than their business needs - and why should they.

They are not charities, they are private small businesses, often struggling to keep going on small margins.

Maybe community centres should have something -but many already do, as do churches/religious centres which would be more likely to provide this sort of service.

What small local cafe has the storage space for thousands of litres of water?

I agree the suggestions above re cafes or shops aren't workable but I do think that community can be a huge part of preparedness.

What I mean by that is simply knowing your neighbours; who has extra needs; people checking in on one another. If you have an elderly neighbour who wouldn't have heating without electricity but you have an open fire, can you get them round to you in the warm? If your neighbour's gas cooker is working but your electricity isn't, might they heat your food for you?

This isn't going to suddenly happen in the midst of an emergency unless people already have relationships with their neighbours. Start building it now.

Where are the shops and cafes getting the power and water from then?

Tbf OP that's the point of getting your own 3 days worth. To give water companies etc time to respond. Small pockets of the population is one thing. If it was a bit wider scale, there will be a pecking order.

What off grid power, where from , and who pays for it ?
Let alone where’s the space and money coming from for all the extra food and water .

I think a shop is better set up to sell food and bottled drinks than a community centre because it is their purpose.
The question of how much stock shops have is exactly my point: we do need to think at a community level and see the role that they will play and how to support them.

This is more what I thought the thread would be about. I absolutely agree.

So who pays the shops to store the stuff? Who pays for the stuff in the first place? It’s not workable at all.

Think of a cafe/ pub/ shop near you. Do they get a delivery of bottled drinks every single day? Are they empty at close of business?

Yes but when your neighbours know you have more you'll be robbed and it'll all be stolen so

i mean we all revert to savages if we are hungry and thirsty. I've told my dog where her go bag is and told her to run if I start eyeing up her flanks

They usually sell bottled drinks.
The power is the question- solar or heatpumps or generators.

I'm thinking that if the grid is off, the power company providing a generator for a row of shops/ cafes/ a supermarket might be a better use than providing it to a group of houses. Say you only have one mobile generator (like the one they used for my street when the transformer stopped working) then prioritising business might make more sense.

When you buy anything from a shop, you pay for storage.
An aspect is the way our food distribution works. There used to be lots of small shops, markets, and foodstalls. Over the last century, in the UK grocery shops have become more centralised, with some people living far from the nearest store.

Thinking in terms of emergency preparedness, we as a society could provide more support to more local businesses which would be able to respond to events such as extreme weather, cyberattacks, outright war etc.

Security is a big thing for small businesses, and cash handling. Business rates relative to larger stores.

But you're talking about extra. Take a small local cafe that might feed 50 people a lunch each day. You're now expecting them to keep supplies for maybe 250 people every day for 3 days. That's food and water for an additional 600 people, assuming they're only doing one extra meal a day. That's massively more that they would have to keep, and potentially never use. So it just has to sit there using space, freezer power etc. You clearly haven't given this any thought at all.

I'm sure shops and cafes wil be open to sell bottles drinks if they can be. Staffing and banking will be other issues though.
I think you are massively overestimating how many generators power companies could supply. Don't rely on that.

If a shop or cafe has a generator, it's for their business use, not for the 'community', which will be a massive group of people.

If there is an emergency it's likely cafes and small shops will have just as much trouble getting hold of stock as the rest of us - if there are power outages or blocked roads, they won't be able to trade.

It is a nice fantasy world but not realistic.

Emergency power supplies are prioritised to with medical equipment keeping them alive. Also getting the grid or parts thereof up and running again.

In the case of a wide spread issue with water, we will discover that only so many bottles of water are available on a certain day. So bring your own bottle to the bowser becomes a thing.

Have you been to a People's Emergency Briefing by your local council? There you could have met the people who have to be ready to pull off an emergency plan, without wasting a penny, at no notice.

Being self sufficient for at least three days allows all these people to get on and do their jobs.

I can reassure you that my local council has draft plans for some sort of soup kitchen thingy, subject to availability of supplies. Community buildings like sports centers will be used.
If you have a local Sikh community, they will be on it.

These threads are laughable.

I'd like to see the big supermarkets being required to prepare in this way.

They profited massively by getting rid of their stock rooms and moving to 'just in time' delivery systems, which can lead to empty shelves at the first whiff of trouble. Now we are being asked to carry our own stock as if the space in our (frequently cramped and overcrowded) homes has no value.

They're now profiting again as people stock up on supplies.

But I also agree with PP that there is prepping to be done by engaging with our neighbours and local community groups so we can support each other in an emergency.

Exactly this.

"The People's Emergency Briefing" seems to be a film about climate change.
My local council has not held any meetings about emergency planning. They have a few paragraphs on their website where they repeat the government advice for individuals and households, and suggest that local communities could prepare plans, but offer no advice.
Where are you?

Whenever you see these type of "messaging" it's a very good practice to stop and ask yourself 2 questions:

1. is it possible this is Russian bot misinformation - seeding panic is in their guide book volume 1
2. has the author been spending too much time with AI - it tends to encourage spiralling

Well if you were the type of person who went to briefings - you'd probably also be the type of person who volunteers to be helpful.
Our local church held an emergency planning meeting this morning.

If you want to be part of the solution not the problem - get involved in your local community.

The Government preparedness site has all the advice and information you need.

I'm not expecting anyone to do anything. I'm suggesting that it might be a good idea to think it through.

I was expecting responses like: "we run a shop and have a weekly delivery, I guess we'd run out within 24 hours." Or: "when card systems go down that's a big issue, as most people don't carry cash - here's what would help."

I didn't expect the responses to be so bad-tempered - I'm leaving this thread, so apologies to anyone who wants to be constructive. Clearly Mumsnet isn't the best forum for this discussion.