Practising, and a household drill programme

Every page in this app is worth less than the version of it that a household has actually done once. A drill is how a plan stops being a document, and it is also the cheapest possible way to discover that the stopcock is seized, the torch batteries are dead and nobody knows where the meeting point is.

None of the drills below takes more than half an hour, most take five minutes, and the whole programme is six short things a year.

Why drills and not reading

Under stress you do not rise to the occasion. You fall to the level of what you have practised.

The reasons are physiological rather than a matter of character. Attention narrows, fine motor control degrades, complex reasoning gets worse, and anything requiring a decision performs badly. What survives is recall of something already done.

So the aim of every drill is to convert a decision into a recall. Not "work out where to go" but "go to the lamp post", because that is a thing everybody has done before.

The second benefit is equipment. Drills fail on kit far more often than on people: the torch is dead, the key is missing, the stop tap will not turn, the alarm has no battery. Every one of those is trivial on a Sunday afternoon and serious at three in the morning.

Short and frequent beats long and rare. Five minutes twice a year for each drill produces better retention than an afternoon once.

The six

Anchor them to something you already do. The clock changes in spring and autumn are the natural pegs, and most households already use them for smoke alarms.

Put them in the calendar with a reminder, because otherwise they happen once and never again.

The fire drill

The most important one, because fire kills far more people in British homes than anything else in this app.

• Both routes out. The normal one and the alternative, because the normal one may be where the fire is.
• In the dark. Once, at least. It is a completely different exercise and it is the condition it will actually happen in.
• To the meeting point, and count heads out loud by name.
• Nobody goes back in. Say it every time, out loud, especially to children and especially about pets. This is the rule that gets broken.
• Check the alarms while you are doing it. Every floor, monthly ideally, and change batteries annually. See siting and testing alarms.
• Check the escape window keys are on their hooks and that everybody can find them in the dark. See ground floor windows and glazing.

Brisk and boring. School drills work because they are unremarkable, and that is the tone to copy.

The utilities drill

The one that finds the most broken things.

1. Everybody walks to the water stop tap and each person turns it off and on. Yes, everybody, including capable children.
2. Same for the gas emergency control valve. Handle across the pipe is off, along the pipe is on. Say it out loud while looking at it.
3. Same for the consumer unit main switch.
4. Find the external stop tap and check you have the key.
5. Check the loft tank valve if you have one.

Things this reliably finds: a stopcock that will not turn, a missing external stop tap key, a consumer unit behind a stack of boxes, a gas valve nobody could locate, and a labelling chart that is wrong. See the mains shut-offs.

Do it before winter, so that anything seized gets fixed before the freeze that would have burst the pipe.

The blackout evening

The most useful and the most enjoyable, and the one children remember.

Turn the power off at the consumer unit for an evening in winter. Deliberately, on a night you have chosen.

What it teaches, none of which you learn by reading:

• Whether you have enough light, and whether the torches work.
• How cold the house gets, and how fast. See make one warm room.
• Whether you can cook, and whether the means of cooking is safe indoors.
• What stops working that you had not thought about: the boiler, the router, the cordless phone, the door entry, the shower.
• Whether the radio works and whether anybody knows the frequency. See radio.
• How the household copes for four hours, which is genuinely useful information.

Do it properly. Meals cooked, the evening spent, bedtime as normal, rather than turning it back on after twenty minutes.

Turn the freezer back on if you run it long, and be aware of anybody with medical equipment before you start.

The comms check

Five minutes, and it tests three things at once.

• Everybody texts the out-of-area contact from wherever they are, on an ordinary day. That tests the number, the habit and the person.
• Check every phone is registered for emergency SMS. Text register to 999 for any that are not. See getting a message out.
• Check the household cards are still in the wallets and school bags, and that the numbers on them are current.
• If you have PMR446 handsets, check the batteries and confirm everybody knows the channel.
• Ask each person what they would do if they could not reach anybody. The gaps show up immediately.

The walk

Walk to the local meeting point with everybody, including the youngest, on an ordinary day.

Then, once a year, walk the route out: to the relative, to higher ground, to wherever the plan says. Time it honestly with the slowest person. Note the bridges, the shelters and the bail-out points, and mark them on the paper map. See moving on foot safely.

The number that comes out of this is the important part, because it usually tells a household that leaving on foot is not realistically in its plan, which is much better known in advance.

The stock and kit check

At the clock change, along with the smoke alarms.

• Water, and the means to treat more.
• Food you can eat without cooking, and rotate anything near date.
• Torches, batteries, power banks. Charge everything, and replace anything corroded.
• First aid kit: restock what has been used, check dates on anything that has one, and check the blister kit specifically.
• Medication, and whether anybody's repeat is running short.
• Fuel, if you store any, rotated. See vehicle preparation and storing fuel.
• The vehicle: tyres including the spare, and the boot kit.
• Documents, and whether the photographs of them are current.
• The household card, reviewed for changed numbers, schools and addresses.

Write the date on the list. A stock check with no date is a stock check nobody knows the age of.

Keeping it unfrightening

The tone matters more than the content, particularly with children.

• Matter-of-fact and brisk. No solemn preamble, no explanation of what could happen.
• Frame it as competence, not threat. "Let's see how fast we can do this" beats "in case something terrible happens".
• Make the blackout evening fun. Torch games, food cooked oddly, everybody in one room. Children remember it as an adventure and the learning happens anyway.
• Praise the doing, especially children.
• Never use a drill as a punishment or a scare.
• Answer questions honestly at the level asked and no further. See teaching children safety.
• Do not overdo it. Six short things a year is a household that is prepared. Weekly drills produce anxiety and resentment and get abandoned. See situational awareness without paranoia.

Debrief and record

Two minutes at the end, and it is what makes the next one better.

• What worked?
• What did not? Especially equipment.
• What did we not know?
• What is the one thing to fix before next time?

Write it down, with the date, in the same place each time. A single sheet in the cupboard with the household card is enough.

Then actually fix the one thing. A drill that finds a seized stopcock and does not lead to a new stopcock has cost you an afternoon and taught you nothing you acted on.

Keep a short log: drill, date, who took part, what was found, what was fixed. Over a couple of years that log becomes the honest picture of how prepared the household is, which is a much better measure than what is in the cupboard.