Emergency water storage for short-term disasters

Imagine that… you’re woken up in the morning by a megaphone announcement outside, with the message that in 20 minutes your municipal water supply will be withheld. You get up as fast as you can, and you have to catch as much water in all available containers, as you can. What are you doing to have this ad hoc emergency water storage?

Of course, you fill up the bathtub, because after you finish watching this video and reading this article, you’ll see if your bathtub plug is 100% tight.

Meanwhile, you gather all the buckets you can get. An average Pole has two buckets in his house — one to wash the floors, and the other as a refuse bin. None of those can be used to store drinking water, without being cleaned and sanitized first. But you fill those up as well nevertherless. You also take the two other clean buckets from the closet, waiting there for such an event. You throw what’s inside, and then pour water.

You do exactly the same thing with all large bowls and pots.

If you have a basket for laundry, you can use it to store water as well. You only need to put a blanket inside, and then a large plastic bag. What’s the blanket for? It’ll keep the bag from being punctured.

What if you only have a shower? And the plug is broken? You put few layers of plastic foil inside, and have 100% sealed water container.

If your shower is too shallow, you can use two or three boards to make the sides higher, and then put the foil inside.

You also pour water in all the sinks in the house. If your double kitchen sink has only one plug, you put a trash bag inside and fill it as well. Even if the bag is not large enough, you will be able to store some extra water this way.

In the worst case you can put a bag in a cardboard box, cut a hole in the bottom and use a cut corner as a faucet.

And by doing all that you expand your emergency water supply for short-term events by two or three times.

When you finish watching the video, buy suitable plastic bags and all the missing plugs for your sinks. And at least two plastic buckets. You won’t be carrying the clean drinking water in a dirty bucket used previously for trash. Five- or ten-liter buckets for food products would be best, especially if they have lids. Those lids will keep the water inside when you’re bringing them home.

On the other hand, it would be wise to have a permanent water storage at your home. We will discuss it in one of the next videos.

Krzysztof Lis

M.Sc. in mechanical engineering. Interested in alternative energy sources, biofuels, and preparedness.

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