Tag Archives: contamination

Preparedness gap: Water

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“But when it comes to slaughter   
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.”
– Rudyard Kipling, “Gunga Din”

A little over a year ago we got a text from our son at the high school basketball game: the local news was reporting that our water supply was contaminated and the city was instructing residents not to drink any of it until further notice. It turned out at one of the pumping stations the machinery that added fluoride to our water had malfunctioned and dumped a whole bunch of it into our water system. That, in turn, may have stripped the inner layer of the pipes, putting potentially dangerous levels of metals in the water. All residents in the affected area (which included us) were not to drink the water under any circumstances until further notice.

As it turned out they had the problem corrected within a couple days, but in the mean time we became aware of just how much water we use–and just how little we had stored. We had three 5-gallon containers to go around for five people and four pets. Had it gone on a couple days more we would have been in trouble.

We vowed then to get more serious about water storage–but we never got around to it. Fast forward a year, and the COVID-19 outbreak came along and revealed more deficiencies in our emergency preparations. Remembering our experience the year before, water storage got moved to the top of the list. We decided to use our government stimulus check to start improving our circumstances.

After some research and some calculations we ordered enough containers to put us in a much better position should water ever become temporarily scarce again. They should be arriving in a couple weeks. By then I hope to have a few things reorganized around the house so that we’ll have places to put all that water.

When we get everything settled I’ll post a review. My brother and I were discussing water storage a week or two ago, and he’s going a different route with his. Perhaps I’ll solicit him for feedback as well.

It’ll be a relief to have that particular deficiency resolved. Water is not something you want to be without. I don’t want to be lickin’ anyone’s bloomin’ boots, thank you.

Let’s do the timewarp again

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Holy moley, where has the time gone? Today I got a little curious and decided to take a look at just what I have on my Simple Self Reliance Facebook page. There were a bunch of links to content on a website. I had honestly forgotten that Simple Self Reliance had once been a blog. I had forgotten that I had once cared deeply about self reliance.

Thing is, I still do. I didn’t for a while–not so much, at least. Moving to Utah opened a whole new chapter in my life that pulled me off in different directions. And here I am now, nine years later, caring deeply about self reliance again.

Back then self reliance was more about weathering the financial storms of life. The biggest problem I had faced to that point was regular bouts of unemployment. When we moved to Utah I likely thought that problem was behind me for a while. I also resurrected a writing career I had talked myself out of in college, and my blogging attention went in another direction on a different blog.

More importantly I largely forgot about self reliance. In spite of a new job that paid more we never seemed to have the money to put into building up our food storage and getting other emergency items together. The kids were getting older and more expensive (teenagers do more than just eat a lot!), and in spite of what they told me at the time, the cost of living is considerably higher in Salt Lake City than in Boise. We’ve been getting by okay, but perhaps we’ve been too comfortable.

Whatever the reason, self reliance has not been foremost on my mind.

That has been changing, however. Around a year and a half ago I began to realize I was losing control of my finances. Nothing serious, mind you, but I found I was only tracking our expenses, not really monitoring them, and not doing anything to improve our financial situation. I’d been investing in my 401K at work, but my over-all financial goals had largely fallen by the wayside. A lot of unnecessary things had crept into our budget.

A little over a year ago a pumping station in our city water network malfunctioned and dumped some chemicals into our water supply at hazardous levels. We were unable to drink water from the sink for over two days while they sorted out the problem. We had some water storage, but we suddenly had to wonder if we had enough–and if it was still good.

For the past several years our neighborhood electrical grid has been unstable, leaving us without electricity for five or more hours at a time, and usually during prime electricity-usage hours. We had plenty of light, but dinners (we have an electric stove) were a bit of a struggle. Once my wife had to go out to find food from a restaurant outside the blackout area which, being vegans, was tricky to find.

Then, of course, 2020 arrived in all its horrific glory. Last October I was informed my job with the bank would end at the beginning of the year. My most recent round of unemployment was, quite fortunately, also my shortest. The day after my job ended I got a job offer, and I started work a week and a half later.

The Coronavirus caught us a little off guard. We’ve generally been pretty good about keeping a few weeks or months ahead on our food supply, but when our state started implementing restrictions the timing was poor. The panic-buying and hoarding began while we were at a low point in our purchasing cycle. We’ve been okay, but we’ve had to carefully monitor our usage on a few things.

In the middle of all this our metropolitan area experienced a 5.4 scale earthquake. Though we live more than 15 miles from the epicenter and only felt the initial quake and one of the many aftershocks, it was a wake-up call all its own. We live next to a major fault line. We might not be so lucky the next time.

The last week or so I’ve been getting very serious about emergency preparedness. My wife and I have made a goal that we will never be so unprepared again. Finding this blog just now seems too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. It seems like a good time to start writing again, to capture our journey as we get serious about self reliance once again.