emergency preparedness , survival gear - March 12, 2012

Water, water, water….

Several years ago, I was on a business trip in Colorado. My co-workers had arranged for us to stay at someone’s home up in the mountains. The first night was great, but the next morning, a water line had frozen and burst somewhere nearby, and the water was completely shut off to the home. For 3 days! We would have moved to a hotel, but we kept hearing that it would probably be on again in an hour or two. HA! No. But we optimistically stayed the entire time.

There were 6 adults in the home. We bought maybe 50 water bottles the first day, but that didn’t even begin to solve the problem. The biggest problem was that we had no way to flush the toilet. To be honest, I can’t remember what we did about that. I think I’ve blocked it out completely. Of course, there were no showers. We ordered take-out or ate at a restaurant every night. We had to use bottled water for brushing our teeth, washing our hands, washing our faces, everything. The second day, we bought about 50 more water bottles to get us through. We couldn’t wash dishes after meals, so we bought paper plates and plastic utensils. It was extremely inconvenient, to say the least. We were miserable and uncomfortable in this beautiful mountain home. And did I mention that we were even gone all day? We were out working during business hours, and the only time we were even at the house was in the early morning and evening. And it was horrible.

So, you may say we were wimps, but I never want to go through that again. I don’t know what we would have done had we not been able to purchase bottles of water the first and second day, and order out for food, and buy paper plates, and leave the house for most of the day!

This wasn’t a big earthquake or a dramatic disaster. This was just a neighborhood with a water problem. It could happen to anyone at any time. True, if I could do it again, I would have immediately checked into a hotel. But what if it had been a real disaster? What if there were no grocery stores with tons of bottled water just waiting for me to buy it? What if the restaurants were closed? What if it had been longer than 3 days? What did we do about flushing the toilet?!

Water is one of the most important things you can store…if not THE most important. Please make sure you have enough, and then some. My next blog will be about water storage, but for now, please just go buy some bottled water and store it under your bed. And even better than that, go get a water filtration bottle for under $35 that will give you the ability to always get good, clean water for way less than the cost of bottled water.

By the way, the water did eventually come back on at the house. But unfortunately, it was during the day and everyone was gone. Why was it unfortunate, you say? It was unfortunate because one of the homeowners had accidentally left the bathroom faucet turned on (and I was glad it was a homeowner and not me!), and the main floor bathroom flooded and then collapsed the floor through the ceiling of the basement and then completely flooded the basement…where we were staying. So VERY unfortunately, my laptop was sitting on the floor in the basement, and was ruined beyond what the hairdryer could repair. But FORTUNATELY, my hard drive was saved. And VERY fortunately, the homeowners’ insurance bought me a brand new MacBook, which was way nicer than my old computer. So it all turned out okay for me. And the homeowners also found a huge rats’ nest that had been in the ceiling of the basement, so they got rid of that too. I guess everyone was happy eventually, but I will never forget that trip. And that is not a good thing. So go buy some water filters or water bottles. And incidentally, if your water goes out, make sure you leave your faucets turned off. Trust me.

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