The National Crisis Centre is calling on households in Belgium to draw up an emergency plan that will enable them to cope if there is a fire, a flood or another crisis situation. The National Crisis Centre’s Yves Stevens told VRT News that “An Emergency Plan is useful both yourself and the emergency services”.
The National Crisis Centre’s website that is also available in English has a list of questions based on which you can draw up an emergency plan for your household. Yves Stevens of the National Crisis Centre told VRT Radio 1’s morning news and current affairs programme ‘De ochtend’ that “It takes around 10 minutes to fill in”.
Mr Stevens stressed that an emergency plan is crucially important. “What are the telephone numbers of your family members or your insurance company? Where is the gas tap located? This is basic information, but we still recommend discussing this questionnaire with your family members.”
“This information can be very useful in an emergency situation such as a fire or flood. It is important that you know this information yourself, but also that you are able make it available to the emergency services. For them an emergency plan contains essential information, for example about how many people may still be missing.”
The National Crisis Centre doesn’t expect us to learn the contents of our emergency plan by heart. “You can print the document off and put it somewhere in your home where it is easy to find. Then everyone will know where to find the information in an emergency.”
The online questionnaire doesn’t only asks questions about family members and utilities, but also about what pets you have and how many of them there are. “This is very important information. It is good for the fire brigade to not only know how many people there are, but also how many pets are in your home if there is a fire. An emergency plan allows the fire brigade to get hold of this information quickly”.
The National Crisis Centre doesn’t want to cause panic. It hopes that by drawing up an emergency plan people will be prepared in the event of an emergency.