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Multiple towns totally out of water

GobBluth

GobBluth

Senior member
Where I live, a gigantic lake provides water services for several towns with populations ranging from 25,000 to 400. Well, the main broke. And not the city main, the main main, as in no more water from the district treatment plant.

So, each town uses its reserve water from its towers, and now that is gone and its a god damn mad house. Makes me fear for the future. Water is expected to be restored in 24-48 hours once they replace the main pipe. But, in the mean time, all the schools shut down (probably protocol), businesses are shutting down. Wal-Mart is a war zone for bottled water. I'm not a doomsday prepper, but I kind of want to be now if 24 hours of no running water can cause this much panic and havoc.
 
short time with no water, fear of running out of or prepping food from the ways that you are accustom will cause a lot of panic. nothing new. I'm not really a prepper, but real (not crazy) prppers prep for this type of stuff or bad storms that can cause you to be stranded of sorts for a few weeks. not so much for the zombie apocalypse or such.

Hell, when i bought my house and had to fix a pluming issue that went wrong, i quickly realized how important it is to prep a little. i can do a few days at best. I have a well so powering that is critical for water. It's doable, but i haven't yet put the effort into doing a proper backup power setup for that.
 
Where are you located?

As for prepping, how far away is the closest town with water? When you can drive 20 minutes, get a motel and take 30 minute showers, you're not having a water crisis.
 
Meh, it's why I usually keep 8-10 24-packs of bottled water stowed away in the garage, as well as canned food to survive for at least a few weeks. It's not exactly difficult to buy some supplies and not eat/drink it.

Electricity I can survive without for a while - same with a car/gas.... Food/water, I cannot.
 
I should probably get a case of plain water for the hell of it. I have about 3 cases of seltzer water, but that would get expensive for stuff like coffee, and half of it is flavored. I have lots of food, cause that's how I buy it. Not really "prepping" for anything.
 
GobBluth said:
I'm not a doomsday prepper, but I kind of want to be now if 24 hours of no running water can cause this much panic and havoc.
Click to expand...

You think that's panic and havoc? Without electricity we'd lose much of our communications and transport. No transport, no supplies. No supplies = Mad Max = Far fewer people. Point being, civilization is constructed and planned out on the cheap. It has limited redundancies (too expensive) and HUGE vulnerabilities. Thankfully, no one capable has put it to the test, yet.
Unfortunately, fresh water remains a naturally fluctuating resource and we can easily overshoot our capacity to steadily supply a region decades before we actually run out. South Africa is facing a "Day Zero" crisis, they will not be the last people to face that crisis this century.
 
Jaskalas said:
You think that's panic and havoc? Without electricity we'd lose much of our communications and transport. No transport, no supplies. No supplies = Mad Max = Far fewer people. Point being, civilization is constructed and planned out on the cheap. It has limited redundancies (too expensive) and HUGE vulnerabilities. Thankfully, no one capable has put it to the test, yet.
Unfortunately, fresh water remains a naturally fluctuating resource and we can easily overshoot our capacity to steadily supply a region decades before we actually run out. South Africa is facing a "Day Zero" crisis, they will not be the last people to face that crisis this century.
Click to expand...

I didn't say it was extreme panic and havoc, but it is panic and havoc, to a degree. More or less I'm agreeing with you. If losing running water for 24 hours in a Western civilized country can cause what I'm seeing today, then something like an EMP attack, a hack on the electric grid, war on our soil, or something else could be Armageddon.
 
If you can't survive a couple of days without modern conveniences, ya better figure it out. I have been without electricity for four days in the middle of winter (temps around zero F) .. No heat no water (well) . Not a big deal. I have a small wood stove and we went down the road to a friends house and got water in buckets so we could flush the toilet, A good fire , a bottle of wine and we were set.
 
I wonder how much reserve our water tower has, it's something that I never really thought about but a massive treatment plant failure could in theory happen. That would probably be worse than a massive black out. At least with a massive blackout all the critical stuff just switches to generator, telcom continues to run uninterrupted on battery power until portable generators can be brought in, etc.

I guess one thing you could do is get water from a nearby lake or river and just boil (could use BBQ or a fire if power is out too) and filter it if a fully outage happened. Suppose it's not a bad idea to keep a britta and unopened filter for an occasion like that.
 
Yeah i've got a bunch of different gravity filters and a pond out back if worse comes to worse. Can't see that happening though.
We have our own private well and a propane generator to run the pump for when the power goes out.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
Meh, it's why I usually keep 8-10 24-packs of bottled water stowed away in the garage, as well as canned food to survive for at least a few weeks. It's not exactly difficult to buy some supplies and not eat/drink it.
Click to expand...

Gonna have to do that... never really thought about it but plenty of space in the basement.
 
Its literally falling out of the sky all day here (east coast). Tell them to bring buckets and they can have all they want.

One thing people forget is that your hot water heater is a giant reserve of water that can last for several days.
 
There's a documentary about water rights and issues in California where they talk to people who haven't had water in years. When the places do get it, it's nasty. I'm lucky to live somewhere with a lot of water.
 
KB said:
Its literally falling out of the sky all day here (east coast). Tell them to bring buckets and they can have all they want.

One thing people forget is that your hot water heater is a giant reserve of water that can last for several days.
Click to expand...

That's the thing too, you either have rain water you can use which is going to be decently clean, or in winter you can just go get snow outside, and of course there is the water heater. Though if you have no water pressure it may be an issue getting the water out without starting to dismantle stuff.

Keeping a bunch of water in large containers is probably not a bad idea though. Especially if you just make it a container you use daily, like filtered water that you keep in the fridge and keep topped up. Come to think of it there are a lot of simple things like that we can do to at least be basically prepped for stuff that most never really think of doing.
 
You have 30-50 gallons of water in your hot water heater tank. There should be a valve at the bottom you can drain it from. Be sure turn off the gas or electricity to it first. Then open a vent on the top of the tank so it won't create a vacuum when you draw the water off. You can loosen the intake or outlet line on the top of the tank to do this. You may be able to supply a vent by opening a hot water faucet in a nearby bathroom or kitchen, I'm not sure how well this would work. Make sure the tank is full when you turn the gas or electricity back on
 
Red Squirrel said:
I wonder how much reserve our water tower has, it's something that I never really thought about but a massive treatment plant failure could in theory happen. That would probably be worse than a massive black out. At least with a massive blackout all the critical stuff just switches to generator, telcom continues to run uninterrupted on battery power until portable generators can be brought in, etc.

I guess one thing you could do is get water from a nearby lake or river and just boil (could use BBQ or a fire if power is out too) and filter it if a fully outage happened. Suppose it's not a bad idea to keep a britta and unopened filter for an occasion like that.
Click to expand...
Water filtration for hikers/campers has come a long way. You can buy a $20 setup to scoop up a quart of dirty water and filter 100,000 gallons of water through it. No boiling needed.

Top one on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Sawyer-Produ...door-recreation&ie=UTF8&qid=1526690312&sr=1-1
 
I agree with the above poster, the new modern filters are amazing and there is really no excuse not to have one. I live in hurricane zone and in a pinch your hot water heater and toilet tanks (the tank not the bowl) have quite a bit of potable water. To the poster that commented he wasn't sure how you'd get it out with no pressure, they are designed to be drained in case of failure so it isn't hard.
 
Squisher said:
Water filtration for hikers/campers has come a long way. You can buy a $20 setup to scoop up a quart of dirty water and filter 100,000 gallons of water through it. No boiling needed.

Top one on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Sawyer-Products-SP103-Filtration-System/dp/B00MPH1LEU
Click to expand...

If you're actually going to buy a water filter, get a Sawyer Squeeze, not a Mini. I don't even carry the Mini backpacking, as it's just too much work. The Squeeze is about $30 and you can find them at most Walmarts.
 
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