Typical of all modern UK public services, condescending organisations. Let people think for themselves.

I have to say, if I hadn't seen this thread I would not have gone to have a look at the London Fire Brigade twitter page. Rather cynically I thought "who would follow the London FB"? but it turns out 58000 people..... Maybe it's a generational thing but I rarely go looking at twitter (except to see what my youngest son is doing!) Anyhoo, it actually looks fairly useful, I might go see if my local FB Twit's - is that the correct verb?

Well I say: Well done the London fire brigade......In Darwin in the 70's there were some very serious injuries resulting from flying objects thanks to Tracey. Slightly different storm but this is still predicted as Hurricane force. But also: Well done you for thinking ahead, many don't and they need a promt to go out in the garden and tidy up.

Perhaps the tweet which sparked this thread was just the first of a number of more detailed tweets and intended mainly to make people aware of the impeding 'superstorm'. I know nor care little about 'Twitter' but do understand that large numbers of people use it nowadays. Since Saturday morning there has been plenty of detailed advice about how people in areas likely to be affected by the storm should take care. For drivers this includes not driving through flooded stretches of road unless their depth is known to be shallow, and being vigilant for fallen trees. Perhaps the best advice is that from veteran weather forecaster Michael Fish (of 1987 'superstorm' fame/notoriety), namely for people to delay trying to travel to work for several hours if roads and transport services in their areas are adversely affected. What's the point of sitting in vehicles in massive traffic jams or at stations looking at screens advising that trains are seriously delayed or cancelled? Though ample and regularly updated information should be available from media sources, including local radio and regional TV news, I guess that some or many people will ignore the information and try like lemmings to get to work even though they face inevitably long delays! :-(

Spare a thought for the many people who work for emergency services, local authorities and power companies, etc., in areas affected by the storm and are having a very demanding day and probably having to make lots of dynamic risk assessments about situations they encounter. Also, in the days or weeks to come, it's likely that many people will be involved in carrying out repairs to damaged properties. As such work could include roof repairs by people who don't normally work at height, will there be a rise in related accidents and deaths? From past experience with a local authority I know that local authorities in affected areas will probably try to deploy any employees known to be competent with chainsaws into helping to deal with fallen trees and branches today and over the next few days. On top of that it's understandable that some members of the public who own chainsaws but are not competent and suitably equipped will try to help relatives and neighbours and/or try to deal with fallen trees and branches in public places, and thus put themselves at risk through a mixture of ignorance and public-spirited enthusiasm.