Preparing for emergencies

Household emergency lifesaving plan logo One of the priorities of Belfast Resilience Forum is to assist people to be more prepared to deal with an emergency. We have a number of ways to do this:

Individual preparedness

In a major emergency, it may be some time before the emergency services can help you. Our Household Emergency Life-saving Plan can help you, your family and your housemates to agree in advance what you will do in an emergency. You can find information on preparing for emergencies and advice on what to do when an emergency happens in our emergency planning section and on NI Direct.

There is also lots of advice on getting ready for winter.

Critical care registers

If you or someone in your family relies on electricity or water due to a medical condition you should think about signing up to the NI Electricity or NI Water critical care registers.

Anyone with electrical equipment which is vital to their health should see if they are eligible to sign up to the NI Electricity critical care register. Examples include people on a ventilator or with a stair lift or electric hoist in their home. You can find out more about who is eligible and how to register on the NI Electricity website or by calling NI Electricity on 08457 643 643.

If you have a serious medical condition and you rely on having water, you should sign up to NI Water’s customer care register (which includes critical care). You can find out more about how to do this on the NI Water website or by calling Waterline on 08457 44 00 88.

If you are eligible to, you can sign up to both registers.

Community preparedness

In an emergency, often friends, neighbours and members of our local community work together to help each other. Some communities have recently started to develop their own community emergency plan for their area.

If you are thinking about beginning a community emergency plan in your area, please email belfastresilience@belfastcity.gov.uk. We can give you help to access templates and information to get you started.

You can find more useful resources and tools on the Cabinet Office website.

Business preparedness

Belfast Resilience and its members run regular business continuity events for local businesses. If you or your staff would like to attend our next event, please email belfastresilience@belfastcity.gov.uk.

You can find lots of guidance on preparing your business for emergencies and putting business continuity arrangements in place in our emergency planning section and from NI Business Info.