France is set to publish a national survival guide in October to help the population better cope with natural disasters and emergencies. The booklet will instruct people on how to better prepare for and respond to crises that afflict France every year.
These include flash floods, wildfires, heatwaves, power and communication outages. The guide was delivered to the Prime Minister’s office in July and is expected to be released on France’s Risk Awareness Day. It is structured around three simple pillars – prepare, protect, take part – and reads more like a practical leaflet than a lecture.
One of the main emphases is on prior preparation. The booklet encourages families to agree meeting points and learn local risks (ranging from floods to wildfires depending on location).
The guide’s authors strongly recommend that people prepare a small home kit which they can grab quickly when disaster strikes.
The kits should include drinking water, torch, first-aid basics, long-life food, essential medications and documents, plus a battery or crank radio. A series of clear diagrams and short captions instruct people on what different sirens mean and what to do when receiving an SMS alert.
Advice on when to stay put, hurry upstairs to safety or evacuate is also dispensed in the 30-page tome. The final section encourages people to take part in local services that help mitigate the fallout from natural disasters. They urge the public to volunteer with the local fire brigade or civil protection service.
People are also asked to consider serving as reserves in the armed forces or police. The guide dovetails with the government’s risks portal, info.gouv.fr/risques, which maps five big categories: natural, technological, health/epidemic, cyber and terror.
The new booklet is meant to bring that all altogether, written so that everyone can understand it – from children to grandparents. Officials in the Isère department in southeastern France have already started to increase the public’s risk awareness.
The region’s geography ranges from the flatlands near the Rhône Valley to the towering Alpine massifs of Chartreuse, Vercors, Belledonne, and Oisans. It is particularly vulnerable to a wide number of natural hazards, including floods, landslides, earthquakes and avalanches. Earlier this year in the spring, authorities launched their “Explorisk38” initiative in local schools.
