Sanitation Without Sanitation Services

By Ian Hayes, Roseway NET Assistant Leader & Roseway Prepares Member

Great job! You’ve got your water storage solution for emergencies worked out so you’ll have clean water for drinking, cooking, and bathing in the event that a major incident disrupts our regular water supply. Maybe you’re also a few weeks in to preparing your emergency kit. Now what?

Have a Toilet Plan

In the event of a natural disaster—particularly an earthquake—normal sanitation services like sewer and water are likely to be disrupted. While you might be thinking, “No problem! I’ve got a shovel, I can dig a pit and make do!” you may be surprised to learn that Cascadian soil is not very suitable for that function. As any local gardener will tell you, the soil here doesn’t drain particularly well, and our rainy seasons combined with Portland’s high water table would likely cause a latrine to overflow into the surrounding land.

If subterranean sewer networks are damaged by an earthquake, it could take up to two years for service to be restored. Your house might use a septic system (and there are ways to check if your septic system is still working after an earthquake), but if it doesn’t, there are still steps you can take to make sure you’re prepared for the worst.

Two Buckets

Supplies to consider: two 5-gallon buckets with labels, toilet paper, heavy duty garbage bags, hand sanitizer or soap, bark chips or sawdust, and some gloves

A simple and easy way to maintain good sanitation practices in an emergency is by allocating two 5-gallon buckets (with locking lids!) for waste: one for liquids (urine or pee) and one for solids (feces, poo, or vomit).

First, label them to keep them separate. We urinate far more than we defecate, and while urine is not sterile, it does not cultivate the kinds of deadly diseases that can spread when feces are not handled, stored, and disposed of safely. A full urine bucket (perhaps diluted with gray water) can be safely emptied on a garden, lawn, or the ground.

Second, line the poo bucket with a heavy duty or contractor-grade 13-gallon garbage bag. This will make storage and disposal so much easier.

Third, keep a good quantity of bark chips, sawdust, dry leaves, or even shredded paper on hand to cover your waste each time you go. This will help absorb moisture and reduce odor, as well as aid in the decomposition process.

Finally, you need a way to wash your hands. If you have plenty of clean water, you can use regular antibacterial hand soap, but in a pinch you can also use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that has at least a 60% concentration of alcohol. If you can get your hands on four buckets before an emergency, you can fashion a “tap-up” sink from the other two to create a handwashing station.

Disposal

While the pee bucket can be dumped pretty much anywhere when full, you’ll want to empty the poo bucket when it’s reached about half of its capacity. You can lift out the garbage bag, tie it off, and seal it inside a second garbage bag for safe storage someplace away from food, water, kids, pets, and pests that might compromise the container’s integrity. An old trash bin with a tight-fitting lid would be great, but avoid storing them in curbside trash or compost bins, since city waste management infrastructure is not prepared to properly dispose of human waste.

One thing to bear in mind is that it’s incredibly difficult to clean surfaces when conserving sanitation supplies during a natural disaster or other emergency. You want to be extremely cautious to avoid contamination when interacting with fecal matter.

What Next?

Visit emergencytoilet.org for more information about sanitation. They have a detailed Emergency Toilet Guidebook that addresses a lot of questions and clears up some common misconceptions, as well as handy stickers you can use to label your buckets. The Sewer Catastrophe Companion goes even more in-depth on emergency sanitation, drawing on experiences from the 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand during 2011, where sanitation services were disrupted for six months.