Water Woes in the Village
Water was pouring out of the ground and running across the street over the break. An emergency crew immediately went to work excavating to find and fix the problem. I didn’t have my measuring tape with me but when I visited the scene it looked like the repair guys were down in that cold and wet ground some 10 or 12 feet working on the main. It looked altogether chilly and unpleasant!
The main was repaired and water was restored to the village by evening, but in the meantime, a boil order was issued, which is still in effect as I write this 4 days later. When I got the notice, I made a trip to the store to pick up a couple of gallons of water and got a quick and brutal reminder of just how fragile our water supply really is: Both local grocery stores were nearly completely sold out of water. Only a few cases of individual bottles of water remained, which I crankily won’t buy because most of those bottles end up in landfills or our oceans. And some brands are just tap water anyway, a great corporate scam….tap sold water at some 300,000 percent profit!
Aroostook was also under a boil order, a water main had broken in that community earlier in the week. At any rate, we had water problems and our local supply of bottled water got wiped out in a matter of hours.
And, although we are still under a boil order as I write this we were lucky to have our water pressure restored within the day but it certainly highlighted the importance of being prepared!
Not only do you need to plan for drinking water, you should also have a few buckets of water stashed to flush toilets. During our own brief water outage I noticed several posts on facebook from people requesting water for flushing purposes.
Here’s a brief starter list from an EMO site, everyone should customize a plan to suit their own needs of course.
- Non-perishable food (canned goods, granola bars etc.)
- Manual can opener
- Bottled water (4 litres per person, per day)
- Flashlight and spare batteries
- Radio or crank radio (to listen to news bulletins)
- First-aid kit
- Candles, matches/lighter
- Extra car keys and cash (including coins/cards for telephone)
- Important papers (identification, insurance information)
- Clothing and footwear (one change of clothes per person)
- Blankets or sleeping bags (one blanket or sleeping bag per person)
- Toilet paper and other personal supplies such as shampoo, hairbrush, tooth brush and toothpaste, soap and a towel and face cloth (one for each person)
- Medication
- Backpack/duffel bag (or something else to carry the emergency survival kit in, in case you have to evacuate)
- Whistle (to attract attention, if needed)
- Playing Cards (because without power you won’t have computer games! Back to the basics, eh?)
- Be sure to check the contents of your emergency survival kit at least twice a year to ensure the freshness of your food and water.
- Ensure that all members of your household know where your emergency survival kit is located within your home.
When a water main breaks, it opens up the water supply to contamination from dangerous bacteria such as E coli. To be on the safe side, boil orders are issued, which means that all water that will be used for cooking, drinking or brushing your teeth must be held at a rolling boil for one full minute. Sanitize hand washed dishes by giving them a final rinse in a chlorine bath (2 Tbsp Javex per gallon of water). If you have an ice maker, don’t use the ice until the boil order is over and the system has been purged.
Water is one of our most precious commodities and we here in New Brunswick are extremely fortunate to have access to pure, clean water. It’s amazing how quickly we realize the importance of water when we can’t just turn on a tap!
