The First Step Toward Preparing for a Natural Disaster
By Ian Hayes, Roseway NET Assistant Leader & RosewayPrepares Member
You want to be prepared for the next natural disaster—whether that’s an earthquake, an ice storm, or the next wildfire season—but there’s just one problem: where should you start?
Start With Water
You might be able to survive for weeks without food, fuel, or electricity, but you won’t make it more than a few days without water. In the event of a natural disaster, normal water service may be disrupted, or municipal water supplies may become contaminated, and having your own emergency supply of clean, potable water could make the difference between life or death.
How Much Water?
You want to have enough clean water stored up for each member of your household to have one gallon per day for at least two weeks—or fourteen gallons per person. If you have pets, you need to plan for them as well. Cats and dogs need 1oz of water per pound of body weight each day, so that’s about 1½ gallons per cat and up to 5½ gallons per dog.
Why two weeks? In the event of a subduction zone earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, our water supply infrastructure could be greatly damaged, and it could take up to fourteen days for emergency (including clean water) to arrive.
Where Do I Get It?
Buying bottled water is simple and easy enough to do, but you can also store tap water in your own sanitized containers. If using your own containers, make sure they’re made of food-grade plastic or metal that is designed to store water, and that they weren’t previously used for milk or fruit juice. Residual milk proteins and fruit sugars can contribute to bacteria growth, which could contaminate your water supply from within.
Read more on the breakdown of water needs from regionalH2O.org
If you want to buy storage vessels specifically for emergency water, keep in mind that one gallon of water weighs about eight pounds. You can fill small to medium size containers (like this EcoCore Aqua-Tainer 7-gallon jug) from your sink and then store them in multiple cool, dark places around your house, but if you’re considering a larger container (like this 55-gallon water barrel) you should fill where you plan to keep it using a food-grade hose. As long as your water comes treated from a water provider, no further purification is needed—just make sure to fill your sanitized container to the top, don’t touch the inside when fitting the lid, and write the date you filled it on the outside.
If your home has a water heater, it may also be able to provide 30–80 gallons of potable water in the event of an emergency, so long as it isn’t tankless. Follow the link above to learn how to access it.
Note: Many manufacturers of larger containers (like the 55-gallon water barrel)offer cheaper prices for larger orders than smaller ones. If you and your neighbors are looking to purchase emergency water storage containers, you could combine your buying power to lower the cost for each of you!
How Do I Make Water Safe for Drinking?
While neither bottled water nor tap water expire (so long as they’re properly stored in sanitized, sealed containers,) there are several ways to treat water in case of an emergency if you have reason to suspect its purity that include boiling it for at least one minute, disinfecting it with unscented chlorine bleach (⅛tsp per gallon of water,) using chemical treatment methods such as iodide tablets, or distilling water to remove microorganisms and other chemical contaminants.
What Next?
Building a robust emergency supply kit doesn’t have to be daunting or difficult, and there are a lot of resources to make the process totally manageable. This weekly shopping list for emergency preparedness from Portland Bureau of Emergency Management breaks it down into twenty-four small checklists of a few items to collect every week that will take you from being completely unprepared to having an emergency kit for virtually every disaster scenario over the course of the next six months. You can also purchase pre-made kits from companies like PrepareSmart, Emergency Kits, and Emergency Disaster Systems.