How you stay in touch

The family plan

Pick one out-of-area person everyone can text or call. Local lines jam when a town has the same bad day; a relative two counties away is often easier to reach. Each person tries them, and they keep the list of who is safe. Put the number on paper in every bag and in the kitchen drawer.

Agree a meeting place if home is the thing you cannot use, and a time you will wait. “The library steps, three o’clock, then the next day at the same hour.” Children should practise saying the contact’s name.

Radios

A household pair of licence-free walkie-talkies will reach across a garden or a street, not across a county. They are for “I am in the garden” during a power cut, and for finding each other in a crowd. Charge or store the cells with them.

A proper amateur radio is a skill and a licence, not a purchase. If you want that, take the course on a quiet month. Until then, the broadcast radio and the paper plan do more work.

What to say

Short messages get through when networks are limping: where you are, whether you are safe, where you are going. Do not rely on a group chat as the only record. If you have a signal for an hour, send the one message that matters and charge the phone.