Why we built evac.lt
Because information about shelters and being prepared is online, and in a crisis the internet may not work.
After February 2022, many people in Lithuania thought seriously for the first time about what they would do if they had to shelter or leave. Where is the nearest shelter, what does the siren mean, what goes in the bag.
The answers are out there. PAGD publishes the lists of shelters and evacuation points, and LT72.lt and the Ministry of National Defence booklets explain how to prepare. The trouble is that nearly all of it is online. In a crisis, connections often fail: the power goes, infrastructure gets damaged, and networks and websites can’t cope when everyone looks for information at once. We’ve seen this happen in Ukraine again and again.
What was missing
We looked at what already exists. The official LT72 app shows shelters on a map, but it won’t find an address or guide you to a shelter. Shelter websites only work online. The most popular navigation apps, Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze, are mostly used online: Waze doesn’t work without internet, and Google and Apple maps have to be downloaded in advance, which almost nobody does. None of them has the official shelters. Offline encyclopedias have medical knowledge, but no map. And if you had to evacuate to Latvia or Poland, Lithuanian websites wouldn’t help you much there.
To have all of it offline today, you’d need several apps, import the shelter data by hand and then keep it up to date. Hardly anyone will do that.
So we put it all in one app. It works without a connection, and the shelter data updates as soon as you open it with internet.
evac.lt doesn’t replace the official LT72 app. We recommend installing it too, and keeping emergency alerts switched on in your phone’s settings.
How we built it
Above all, everything you might need had to work without internet. You only need a connection to download and update.
The app collects no data about you. There are no accounts, ads or analytics, and your location is only used on your phone.
The data has to be trustworthy. The shelter list is maintained by PAGD, not by us. Packs are signed, so nobody can alter them, even when they’re passed from phone to phone.
When the siren sounds, there’s no time to read. So the nearest shelter is shown straight away, and the advice is short.
The app is free and has no ads. All the data it uses is open, and the sources and licences are listed on the data page.
Finally
“I hope no one ever needs this app. But it’s better to be prepared.”
Ideally it just sits on your phone and now and then reminds you to pack a bag or talk a plan through with your family. And if it’s ever needed, it works.
Found a mistake? Write to us: info@evac.lt. You can also report errors in the shelter list to PAGD.