In preparation for another hurricane season (and yes, we are ALREADY in hurricane season again!), there is a great article that you can read HERE entitled 'Emergency Water Storage'. Some of the main points of the article include:-Store 1 gallon of water per person per day, and store a minimum of a 3-day supply. They recommend having a storage for at least 10 days, but if possible, store enough for 30 days!
-When supplies run low, don't ration your water! Drink what you need today and find more for tomorrow.
-Store water in food grade plastic or glass containers (you can tell if it's food grade by checking the bottom of the container for the letters 'HDPE' and the number '2' in the recycle symbol).
-Stored drinking water should be rotated every year. Stored tap water should be rotated every 6 months (*I'll share a funny story about that at the end of this).
The article also tells you:
-how to clean/prepare containers for use
-how to treat/purify water
-where to store it
-where and how you can get water in a pinch (i.e. your water heater has about 30-60 gallons of water in it!)
This is all good information to know (as we are well aware!), so let's get prepared!
*Okay, now for the funny story: With Hurricane Ike we were fortunate here in Friendswood to not lose our public water or have it contaminated. However, Jim and I (this is Debbie Roberts writing this), felt prepared even if we had lost water because over the past year we had been saving drinking bottles (the kind that had once had juice in them or whatever) and filling them with tap water for use in things like washing dishes, clothes, brushing teeth, etc. (we have a separate water storage system for our drinking water). Anyway, we didn't ever have the need to open those bottles following Ike because, again, we maintained safe public water. However, after everything settled down we figured we should probably check on our water and maybe empty the bottles and refill them. Well, as Jim opened some of these bottles, he nearly got knocked off his feet and lost his lunch at the STENCH that came out of these bottles! I'm not kidding when I say he was doubled over and gagging at the horrific odor. Okay, so this story may not exactly be funny to Jim (or you for that matter), but it was to me. :) The moral of the story is: follow the article's information on properly preparing your containers for storage! Ours were obviously not cleaned out properly before we put water in them and had additionally sat on the shelf for too long! They would have been of absolutely no use to us if we had needed them! So now you can learn from our dumb mistakes. :)
Happy Hurricane Season!
1 comment:
Heeeheeee. We have had similar experiences. Only we didn't have the smell problem. It was just when you actually drank the water. Just let me say that root beer flavored water is not good even if you are thirsty.
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