A lesson from the Spanish-Portuguese power cut yesterday.
Get yourself a battery-powered radio
so you can find out what's happening
as modern life disintegrates around you.
And maybe also a battery-powered torch.
Oh, and some batteries as well.
Now, on this programme, we're particularly keen
on the keeping of a radio so you can hear PM
even when the electricity grid has collapsed.
Someone else keen on radios in emergencies
is James Cridland, editor of Pod News,
a radio futurologist who consults and speaks
on the topic of radio's future.
I spoke to him from Australia earlier
where it seems they get a lot of use
out of their battery-powered radios.
The bushfire is heading towards Omeo,
Angla's Rest, Dinner Plain and Kabungra.
This fire is threatening homes and lives.
Here we have events all the time
in terms of fires and floods and everything else.
And we are told again and again,
go out and buy a battery-operated radio.
Make sure you've got batteries for it as well,
which is just as important too.
Yeah, but I suppose the wind-up radios
would be better because I know that I actually
don't listen on a battery-operated radio very often.
And the day that I need that darn battery-operated radio,
the batteries aren't going to be up to date, you know.
Yes, well, wind-up radios are absolutely fine.
Of course, most radio is on DAB now
and that means, you know, you'd need to go out
and find a wind-up DAB radio.
But, you know, radio's always made sure
that it is an emergency service.
One of my earliest memories, actually,
was 1978 in Somerset.
I remember my parents being very excited
because the BBC put up a special emergency radio station
for us after a large storm.
You're tuned to the BBC emergency station, Radio Taunton.
Good morning.
This is Peter Davis and I bid you a very big welcome
to the opening of Radio Taunton on 224 metres medium wave.
During the present emergency in Somerset caused by snow...
It's been doing this for a long, long time.
What do you use them for in Australia, out of interest?
I know you do get storms and fires and things.
Oh, yes, absolutely.
I mean, we get floods.
We get, you know, floods in places the size of Wales,
all completely underwater, and also fires as well.
And, of course, you know, we've seen bushfires
happening in Canada as well, in the US.
And the radio is probably the one thing
that you can pretty well guarantee will work
in some way, shape, or form,
because it's not reliant on cell phone connections and wires.
And that's an important part of, of course,
getting messages over to people.
The broadcasters, are they robust and resilient
in the face of anything, be it a fire or a massive mega power cut?
Because, obviously, they do need power to transmit.
Indeed, they plan for things like that.
20 years or so ago, I worked in the building where you are,
not necessarily exactly where you are.
We were planning how we would stream radio online,
and we had additional plans there in case anything happened
to that particular area of London.
So it is something that is taken very, very seriously
by radio companies and media companies across the world.
James, what else is in your emergency kit there?
Obviously, people are told, and people are literally advised,
to have a battery radio available in the event of something.
But what else is in your emergency kit?
Yeah, indeed.
So we are told to have, you know, things like tinned food.
I mean, we had a cyclone only three or four weeks ago here.
So we made sure that we had enough tinned food to last for a good couple of days.
A battery powered radio, of course, a torch, just as important.
And again, enough batteries for that sort of thing as well.
And those things are really the important things alongside water.
My wife, to my surprise, as you can tell, I'm a Brit, but my wife is from here.
She filled up the bath full of water.
And I said, what are you doing?
And she said, well, we might need this, you know.
So there are important things that we just need to, you know, bear in mind there as well.
Radio buff, James Cridland there.
Not exactly selling Australia, I have to say.
There they get cyclones and storms.
Here we have, well, you know, a perfectly pleasant 22 degrees, don't we?
Let us get the weather.
It's Darren Bett today.
Darren.
Hello.
Yeah, well, it's warmer than that at the moment.