Place of safety

The sources use the term rather than define it. The Northern Ireland guide to emergency planning arrangements defines evacuation as "the process by which people are moved away from a place where there is immediate or anticipated danger to a place of safety, offered appropriate temporary welfare facilities and enabled to return to their normal accommodation / activities when the threat to safety has gone, or to make suitable alternative arrangements". In that definition the place of safety is the destination of an evacuation, and the welfare facilities, typically a rest centre, follow from it.

The Be Ready terrorism page uses the phrase in the first step of its Run, Hide, Tell advice for anyone caught up in a terrorist attack: "RUN, to a place of safety. This is a far better option than to surrender or negotiate." Only if there is nowhere to go does the advice move on to hiding, and then to telling the police by calling 999.

For a community emergency plan the idea is the same: somewhere people can go that is away from the hazard. Hampshire and Isle of Wight's local resilience forum asks community groups to share their plan so that responders can ask for access to buildings or resources in an emergency.