Thinking about emergency preparedness

[epershand]

Currently working from home while the maintenance guys from my building management company replace my hot water heater and (surprise!) my doorbell. But have definitely been thinking about emergency preparedness in general.

At sassbandit's going-away party, a big group of us wound up settled in the living room talking about emergency preparedness and how our different backgrounds led us to think about it differently. One woman had lived through a 7.0 earthquake; one man pointed out that as a Londoner, he was prone to thinking of the sort of disasters that halted service as being human-made only, and not something that could come from the earth.

I grew up in an area where power outages were a regular winter event--the combination of windy rainstorms, trees with relatively soft wood, and standing powerlines meant that going for a few days without power over the course of the winter was expected. (This was, of course, after we got back "on the grid"--there were several years of my childhood where we relied on a generator for power on an as-needed basis because the power lines didn't run that far out into the woods.)

All this means that I don't treat electricity as a given. I have candles and matches easily accessible, I try very hard not to live anywhere that depends too much on electricity--gas oven/stove is mandatory, gas water heater is an excellent bonus. In a real post-earthquake situation, of course, the gas lines would likely be out along with (or even sooner than) the electricity, but my model is preparation for power outages.

What I'm not used to substantial preparation for is WATER outages, which is precisely what I've been dealing with for the last twelve hours or so. I turned off the gas and water supply to the hot water heater to stop the leak, but since apparently all cold water as well as hot is piped through that system, I've been completely without running water.

I've had sufficient resources to get me through it in the short term--several glasses of water scattered through the house, a few water bottles, the water left over in the kettle. The standing water in my unwashed pots and pans from dinner two days ago (procrastination WIN) for washing my hands.

I haven't had to dig into the official water supply in my Fancy-Schmancy Earthquake Kit, but I'm suddenly hyperaware of how little water there *is* in that kit, probably half a gallon at the most. So an item that has moved up several notches on my to-do list is to buy a few flats of bottled water for my "in case of emergency" stash.

And if you don't have water on hand, I'd strongly advise you to do the same. Because it *doesn't* take a major disaster to take away your water supply, just as it doesn't take a major disaster to take away electricity. (I've seen probably five DW friends post about water or hot water issues in the last six months, and melusina commented on my previous post that she's going through the same thing right now. It's an entirely mundane occurrence, and if it happens to me again I don't want to have to think about the trade-offs of brushing my teeth.

Comments

[melusina]

That's really interesting -- I'd never thought about how your past experiences shape how you prepare for an emergency! I had my thyroid removed the week Katrina hit New Orleans and I knew I would be on synthroid for the rest of my life. I kept thinking about the people who somehow didn't have their medicine and how awful it would be to be stranded without access to the meds you desperately need. One thing I *always* make sure of is that I have extra meds!

Luckily we still have cold water, since ours wasn't all routed through our hot water heater, and we can also use our clothes washer with cold water. We're handwashing dishes with water heated on the stove though, because the dishwasher gets it's water from the hot water heater.

[sassbandit]

Oh boy, yeah... the recommendation for water is a couple of gallons per person per day in your earthquake kit. Those backpack kits are *not* a household kit, they're what you take with you if you have to evac.

I had 2 x those big plastic containers of water (err, the biggest one they sell at safeway, if you know what I mean) plus a flat of 24 bottles in my kit, and didn't really feel like I had enough.

I actually had an awesome earthquake kit (other than the mice eating all the Clif bars). Things I recommend that you might not have: garbage bags, spare toilet paper, dust masks, $200 in small bills and a roll of quarters. Oh, also, put an old pair of shoes in a plastic bag and tie it to the leg of your bed, for when the windows break and there's glass all over the floor. Thing I didn't have but kept thinking of getting: large tub of cat litter. Because if everyone's water's out, well...

[eccentric_hat]

This is interesting, because I guess I tend to think of power outages, etc. as very localized events--that if I lost power, I'd walk to somewhere that had it, and if I didn't have running water, I'd crash with somebody else for a few days or buy some bottled water at the convenience store a block away. Part of the reason for that is that there isn't one particular kind of natural disaster that happens here. There are seldom tornadoes right in the cities (though north Minneapolis was hit pretty badly this spring). The winters can be hard on houses and utilities, but if something happened to my heat in the winter, there's nothing I could keep in my apartment that would help me in that situation (besides extra blankets, I guess). I'd just be doing my best to get out of Dodge.

Mostly I grew up with the idea of keeping emergency preparedness kits in your car. That's where the spare snowpants and Sterno and Clif bars go, in case your engine stalls and you're stuck in a snowbank for three days.