What an amazingly beautiful HOT weekend we’ve just enjoyed and are promised much more to come the rest of this summer! Yet a heatwave can have quite serious consequences some of which are perhaps well less known. Mostly people talk about health effects and there is a so called Heat Health Watch, for example
Heat-health-watch in place in UK as temperatures sore across the British Isles https://t.co/PclKKLX3tq pic.twitter.com/Dxg7KqFAle
— Sophia Bird ITV (@SophiaWeather) June 19, 2017
Heatwaves are national emergencies and the public need to know https://t.co/vE1rBL7Zbo — The Guardian (@guardian) June 21, 2017
With regards to national preparedness, the Heatwave plan for England kicks in every year on the 1st June and runs to mid September. But what about personal preparedness?
Heatwaves affect anyone says the British Red Cross, especially older people, children and babies and people suffering from certain chronic conditions. Yet heatwaves not only affect health. Our Preparedness for Heatwave page explains like this tweet:
#HeatwaveUK really biting now! What do you actually know about #heatwave? Preparedness: be informed! #prepared #healthandsafety #heatstroke pic.twitter.com/9hyE8IfDi5 — EVAQ8 Emergency Kits (@EVAQ8_news) June 19, 2017
So in addition to health, you need to be better prepared for power cuts such as brownouts and blackouts. Thankfully, power is usually restored pretty quickly. However, if you suffer an extended power cut the numbers to remember for food safety are 2 hours and 5°C. Fresh food left at above 5°C for 2 hours may spoil and in the most severe cases may lead to food poisoning. Also see guidance on refrigerated food and power outages and frozen food and power outages and check out our blog on Modern Emergency Food Storage which is ideal as preparedness measures. But enough about food! In this heat you’ll probably focus less on food but simply on how to cope in hot weather (and hopefully won’t get stuck in elevators or worse!). Dehydration symptoms can quickly sneak up on you so be aware and drink plenty of cool water even if you’re not feeling thirsty. Drinking plenty of water keeps your system going but you may still find you’re feeling uncomfortably hot, especially if like all of us you want to or have to keep active. So here is a quick cheeky fix, a bit of personal preparedness on the fly on how to stay cool
Cheeky quick fix #heatwaveUK 🌞🌞🌞 #prepared more https://t.co/Hbw6Q6DqNy … heatwave preparedness https://t.co/UYtUQnAoQy … pic.twitter.com/nagWXgZupp — EVAQ8 Emergency Kits (@EVAQ8_news) June 19, 2017
Be cool – stay cool! #prepared :-)
Monika .. and heatwave preparedness is for pets too:
Here are our top #heatwaveUK tips for cats! pic.twitter.com/5u8YEGlsUC — Cats Protection (@CatsProtection) June 19, 2017
“Not Long” is too long. We cannot push this harder, PLEASE PLEASE don’t leave your dog in the car during hot weather #DogsDieInHotCars pic.twitter.com/74buXgm1C6 — UK Cop Humour (@UKCopHumour) June 19, 2017
For more Resilience Blog simply use the right hand navigation. For emergency kits and practical resources use the top navigation. For more on Emergency and Disaster Preparedness head over to our FREE resources at the Preparedness Hub and find out why we use humour. If you like this post, please share it to help raise awareness for Emergency and Disaster Preparedness.
Tweet thank you for sharing!
Find EVAQ8 on social media, like and follow us!
The Guardian 21June2017 UK heatwave brings hottest June day for 40 years
Scorching ‘Lucifer’ heatwaves will become normal by the 2050s https://t.co/uj2SntyDzB #climatechange pic.twitter.com/bcqFtKfqSG
— World Economic Forum (@wef) December 17, 2017