In the past months, I’ve done a fair amount of thinking/learning about emergency preparation. There are a number of things that are important to have available, but what concerned me most (because I felt I was least prepared) was having water available. You realize very quickly how important water is when you don’t have it – you can go without food for a while, but you can’t go very long without water. I’ve seen it recommended to store a gallon per day per person, times the amount of days you want to be prepared for.
Well, it’s not practical for me to go out and buy large containers to hold water at this point. I tried to buy large bottles of water from the store (the kind in the plastic jugs like milk cartons), but they weren’t strong enough to be stacked on top of each other and sprung leaks. I decided to buy two cases (24 bottles) of large individual bottles when I was shopping for the month, just to have something on hand. Then I did the following: each week we use one 64 oz bottle of grape juice. It comes in a pretty strong plastic bottle, so I’ve been rinsing them out, then filling them with water and storing them downstairs. I plan on doing that indefinitely – it doesn’t take hardly any extra time, and if we ever needed it, we would be grateful for the effort. It’s worth it to take small amounts of time now to prepare for possibilities (staying reasonable and balanced, of course). I’m storing them in an area which would otherwise be dead space. I might have almost twenty by now – not much if there were a large scale emergency, but there’s some comfort in knowing that I have something just in case to keep us going for a couple of days.
Yesterday, I was glad I had put the water, though there was no emergency. For some reason that we still don’t know, in the later part of the morning, the water all started coming out of the sink with a yellowish tinge. And that continued the entire day. (I’m guessing that somewhere they were doing work on the water main.) In the past, this would have definitely been very problematic since I wouldn’t have been able to cook. But when my kids saw the water situation, I was able to calmly tell them to bring up some bottles of water from the basement. I love being prepared – it’s such a good feeling!
I hope to share more thoughts about preparing for eventualities with you, since I think it’s really important. I’ve debated with myself about it since I don’t want to be a Chicken Little, but feel irresponsible not to encourage prudence, and I have some concerns on several fronts that have been steadily building over time.
Avivah
