Dominic Brookes, a 34-year-old from Altrincham, has stockpiled food and water in his attic to prepare for emergencies that could make it hard for his family to leave home. He feels vindicated as Storm Austen and Storm Boelo batter the country this week.
Why Dominic started stockpiling
Dominic, who lives with his wife Nicole and two young daughters, told the ECHO that he began preparing after his brother mentioned the El Niño effect. He said: "I think I started doing this when my brother was telling me about the El Niño effect, and I didn't know about that, so I started looking into that, and I was like, 'Okay, maybe this will get worse.'"
He also cited rolling blackouts in Spain as a trigger. "And Spain had a load of rolling blackouts. And I was like, 'Oh my god, if that happens here, I've got two young kids, and if a load of power goes out, I've got no batteries, no torches, no food, I'm going to be fighting little old ladies for cans of lentils in Tesco's, aren't I?' So I wanted to avoid that eventuality."
Preparations and family scepticism
Since then, he has stocked basic foods like pasta, lentils, tomato sauces, and extra large bottles of water. He compared the effort to insurance: "It's just like insurance. You drive around every day and you don't hit people's cars most of the time, but you still pay that premium, and the government makes you pay the premium, makes you pay insurance, you can't drive without insurance."
His mother was sceptical at first, asking, "Isn't this just for Americans that live in bunkers and stuff like that?" Dominic responded: "No, it's it's not, because if the water goes out, we kind of take it for granted in the UK a little bit that the water's always going to be running. If it goes out, no one's really prepared for that."
Creating the Provision app
Undeterred, Dominic built an app called Provision to track his stock levels after growing tired of using a spreadsheet manually. The app allows him to scan items and alerts him when food approaches its expiration date, making it easier to manage supplies.
He has now rolled the app out for others, with over 500 people using it. He said: "Because I spent so much time on it, I thought, well, someone else might find this useful if I'm finding it useful, because I'm not a massive prepper person. So I thought there must be other normal people that want to use this, so I took the time to build it into an app [for others to use]."
Government's Be Ready campaign
Dominic said he has felt a sense of vindication following the government's launch of the Be Ready campaign, which includes a checklist on how the public can prepare for severe weather, cyber attacks, power cuts, and other events causing significant disruption.
