Prepared? Nope, I Guess Not
Well, it's been a very educational couple of weeks around here. I guess it's been physically demanding as well as emotionally demanding because I've gone and caught S's cold. Ick. I can't get my nose to stop running, my throat is raw, and my head feels like it's stuffed with cotton.
Ah, the joy!
Generally, I don't post too much information that could be used to nail down where I live (gotta to keep my ever-vigilant cop happy) but since this could apply to some 80,000 other people, give or take a few, I think I'll go ahead and share about the nightmare of living under a boil order the last few days. I learned quite a bit from the experience in a relatively painless way. (Relatively, mind you.)
On Tuesday evening, I heard from a friend that our water supply was contaminated. She had gotten a phone message from the school district with the warning, as well as the steps the schools were going to take to deal with it. Online the information started to spread like wildfire. It was the main topic of any of my local FB friends, and our ward network had sprung into action too, so I got several emails about it. I'll spare you all the drama and confused reports and such, but in the end what we learned unofficially was that some tests had shown two different kinds of bacteria in our water (days apart) and that we needed to boil all our drinking water, cooking water, and the water we used to wash dishes or brush our teeth with.
Eeeewww!!
OK, I know I don't drink pristine water all the time. I know I pick up bacteria on my hands and get it into my system all the time. But there's something about hearing this that just makes you feel a little sick right off the bat.
Anyway, on to the lessons I learned: boiling water to wash dishes is hard, if not next to impossible. You know, when you read guidelines on being prepared for emergencies and they talk about how much water you'll need and that you'll need a way to purify your water (by boiling it or another way) I always just thought about the water you drink, not about the water you wash in or wash your dishes in. Wednesday afternoon was my first attempt at it. I boiled one huge pot of water and poured it into my sink, but it was not nearly enough water to wash a load of dishes. So I put another pot of water onto boil. But while I was waiting for my huge pot to boil, my hot boiled partially-filled sink started to slowly drain out. Eeek! I decided to wash as many dishes I could in two inches of water before it all drained out, but the water was still scalding hot. Dang it. What I needed were the heavy duty rubber gloves we used in the dishroom back at the Morris Center Cafeteria in college. But alas, I had never been told to have thick rubber gloves on hand in my emergency supplies. Rats. I ended up with semi-scalded fingers as I gingerly tried to wash as many dishes as I could in a short period of time. By the time I finished, the pot still wasn't boiling. I left it for awhile and then came back to rinse off dried on dish soap from the sinkful of dishes. I don't think one pot was enough again to really get them clean, but I gave up and just did the best I could with what I had.
Showering was also problematic. I decided to shower myself and just keep my mouth shut. If I got sick, so be it. But I didn't let the kids bathe. K and S are the worst at gulping water. But K got who knows what in his hair yesterday, leaving it sticky and grimy. I decided not to boil enough water to bathe my son though. He just had to stay dirty.
Then this morning, the real kicker: we had a powerful thunderstorm sweep in and our power was knocked out. When I got up this morning, I didn't know if the power was going to be out all day or only for a few hours. And of course, I have an electric range. It was not going to be easy to boil any water without electricity. Now in a major disaster, I'm likely going to need to boil water without having electricity also, right? I've always figured if I needed to boil anything I could do it on the burner side of our propane grill. But that didn't really seem like an option in the pouring rain. And I'm not sure I even have enough propane to boil all the water I'd need for washing dishes or bathing and still leave us with propane to cook with. A conundrum that luckily I didn't have to solve because my power came back on at 6:30am.
Hmmm. Maybe all our water purification will have to be done with other materials. My mom brought us food grade hydrogen peroxide to use with washing the dishes, and I do have some bleach on hand. Those might have to be our emergency purification solutions. Plus, I think I should add paper goods to my emergency storage. That would save a lot of water right there.
But I hope I never have to face a really long emergency with no power or clean water. Three hours of no power and two days of contaminated water was more than enough!
Ah, the joy!
Generally, I don't post too much information that could be used to nail down where I live (gotta to keep my ever-vigilant cop happy) but since this could apply to some 80,000 other people, give or take a few, I think I'll go ahead and share about the nightmare of living under a boil order the last few days. I learned quite a bit from the experience in a relatively painless way. (Relatively, mind you.)
On Tuesday evening, I heard from a friend that our water supply was contaminated. She had gotten a phone message from the school district with the warning, as well as the steps the schools were going to take to deal with it. Online the information started to spread like wildfire. It was the main topic of any of my local FB friends, and our ward network had sprung into action too, so I got several emails about it. I'll spare you all the drama and confused reports and such, but in the end what we learned unofficially was that some tests had shown two different kinds of bacteria in our water (days apart) and that we needed to boil all our drinking water, cooking water, and the water we used to wash dishes or brush our teeth with.
Eeeewww!!
OK, I know I don't drink pristine water all the time. I know I pick up bacteria on my hands and get it into my system all the time. But there's something about hearing this that just makes you feel a little sick right off the bat.
Anyway, on to the lessons I learned: boiling water to wash dishes is hard, if not next to impossible. You know, when you read guidelines on being prepared for emergencies and they talk about how much water you'll need and that you'll need a way to purify your water (by boiling it or another way) I always just thought about the water you drink, not about the water you wash in or wash your dishes in. Wednesday afternoon was my first attempt at it. I boiled one huge pot of water and poured it into my sink, but it was not nearly enough water to wash a load of dishes. So I put another pot of water onto boil. But while I was waiting for my huge pot to boil, my hot boiled partially-filled sink started to slowly drain out. Eeek! I decided to wash as many dishes I could in two inches of water before it all drained out, but the water was still scalding hot. Dang it. What I needed were the heavy duty rubber gloves we used in the dishroom back at the Morris Center Cafeteria in college. But alas, I had never been told to have thick rubber gloves on hand in my emergency supplies. Rats. I ended up with semi-scalded fingers as I gingerly tried to wash as many dishes as I could in a short period of time. By the time I finished, the pot still wasn't boiling. I left it for awhile and then came back to rinse off dried on dish soap from the sinkful of dishes. I don't think one pot was enough again to really get them clean, but I gave up and just did the best I could with what I had.
Showering was also problematic. I decided to shower myself and just keep my mouth shut. If I got sick, so be it. But I didn't let the kids bathe. K and S are the worst at gulping water. But K got who knows what in his hair yesterday, leaving it sticky and grimy. I decided not to boil enough water to bathe my son though. He just had to stay dirty.
Then this morning, the real kicker: we had a powerful thunderstorm sweep in and our power was knocked out. When I got up this morning, I didn't know if the power was going to be out all day or only for a few hours. And of course, I have an electric range. It was not going to be easy to boil any water without electricity. Now in a major disaster, I'm likely going to need to boil water without having electricity also, right? I've always figured if I needed to boil anything I could do it on the burner side of our propane grill. But that didn't really seem like an option in the pouring rain. And I'm not sure I even have enough propane to boil all the water I'd need for washing dishes or bathing and still leave us with propane to cook with. A conundrum that luckily I didn't have to solve because my power came back on at 6:30am.
Hmmm. Maybe all our water purification will have to be done with other materials. My mom brought us food grade hydrogen peroxide to use with washing the dishes, and I do have some bleach on hand. Those might have to be our emergency purification solutions. Plus, I think I should add paper goods to my emergency storage. That would save a lot of water right there.
But I hope I never have to face a really long emergency with no power or clean water. Three hours of no power and two days of contaminated water was more than enough!
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