The efforts coincide not as a result of coordination, Eriikka Koistinen, the director of communications at the Ministry of the Interior, said to Helsingin Sanomat on Saturday.
Koistinen said the Finnish website will revisit how citizens should prepare for crisis – starting with perhaps the best known aspect of preparedness, the home emergency supply kit – and discuss issues such as war, civil defence, evacuation plans, national defence and the duty to defend the country.
The emergency supply kit should include food and water for three days for each member of the household, according to the current guidelines. Koistinen, though, revealed that the guidelines will be revised next month to refer to a period of “a minimum of three days” to align with the one-week recommendation in Estonia and Sweden.
“There’s also [information] on mental crisis tolerance: how you can prepare for crises in a way that maintains your ability to function and help your neighbours, and how you can develop a sense of community,” she added.
The information is also geared toward encouraging people to reduce their reliance on authorities.
“If there’s a major crisis, authorities won’t be everywhere helping individual people all the time, but people have to be independent,” emphasised Koistinen. “In a welfare society, we’re used to society helping. Preparedness is something everyone should see to by themselves. It’s a civic skill just like reading or writing. We’re trying to communicate this through positives rather than scare people in an alarmist way.”
The web service will also discuss psychological obstacles to preparedness given the tendency to keep unpleasant things out of mind.
“Preparedness isn’t about swearing that something unfortunate will happen; quite the opposite: you’ll be better able to take action, more assured and you won’t panic as much when you’re prepared,” she told the daily.
Finland chose internet as the medium for distributing the information for reasons that include costs and the ease of updating. “[Producing a booklet] would cost millions. Preparedness is also something you have to do in advance, rather than taking out the booklet when something happens,” she reminded.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
