Without weather forecasts or emergency services, flooding, extreme cold, extreme heat, wildfire and failing buildings can kill as readily as any attacker. Check your position against nearby waterways, your shelter against the coldest and hottest weather you can expect, your surroundings for fuel a fire could use, and every building you shelter in for damage. Move out of a compromised structure or a floodplain before the hazard arrives, not after.
Part of Threat Assessment
Weather, flood, fire, temperature extremes and decaying buildings are the dangers that need no enemy. Each can be judged from where you stand and what you hold, using the parent article’s five hazards.
Five Hazards the Parent Article Names
The parent article lists these as the environmental hazards to assess:
- Flash flooding — know your elevation relative to nearby waterways. In a valley or floodplain, one heavy rain event can be fatal.
- Extreme cold — hypothermia kills in hours. Assess your shelter’s insulation and your fuel supply realistically.
- Extreme heat — dehydration and heat stroke. Water requirements double or triple in hot conditions.
- Wildfire — without fire services, a grass fire can cover kilometres in minutes. Assess prevailing wind directions and vegetation density.
- Structural collapse — damaged buildings, bridges and infrastructure continue to deteriorate. Avoid sheltering in compromised structures.
What You Need
- A map of the ground — hand-drawn is fine. Mark waterways, low ground, slopes, and dense vegetation.
- Honest knowledge of your shelter — how well it keeps heat in or out, and how much fuel and water you have.
- A wind record — direction on most days, since it decides which way a fire would run.
Method: Walk the Hazards
Step 1: Flood check Find the nearest watercourse and judge whether you are below, at or above its banks. Look for debris lines, silt and flattened grass that show how high water has reached before. If you sleep on low ground, plan a place higher up to move to.
Step 2: Temperature check Compare your shelter and supplies to the worst weather of the season. See Thermal Management for keeping warm, and Hypothermia and Heat Stroke for the medical side.
Step 3: Fire check Look at the vegetation around you: dry grass, dead brush and trees close to your shelter. Know which way you would leave if fire came, and how far you could get on foot.
Step 4: Structure check Before sleeping in any building, look at it from outside and inside for sagging floors or ceilings, cracked walls, leaning frames and water damage.
Step 5: Score and rank Give each hazard a probability and an impact score, as in Risk Matrix Construction.
Common Mistakes
- Camping on flat low ground for comfort — flat valley floors are where flood water goes.
- Treating a damaged building as shelter because it has a roof — a roof does not help if it falls.
- Ignoring slow hazards — cold and dehydration build quietly. Check them daily.
Damaged buildings and fast-moving fire
Do not enter or sleep under a structure with a visibly sagging roof, cracked load-bearing wall or leaning frame. Grass and brush fires can outrun a person on foot: if smoke and flame are visible and the wind is toward you, leave across the wind or toward bare, burned or watery ground rather than trying to outrun it in a straight line.
What’s Next
- Learn next: Weather Patterns — reading the sky and wind for warning
- Combine with: Terrain Dangers — ground that hurts you