So you’ve realized you live in earthquake country…
Or really, anywhere at all. Last weekend, the magazine “The New Yorker” ran a major article highlighting the major risk of an earthquake disaster in the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Oregon, Washington, and Northern California sit atop the Cascadia subduction zone, a fault capable of producing an earthquake and tsunami comparable to the 2011 Japanese Tohoku disaster. However, large quakes in those regions are rare, happening every few hundred years, so neither building codes nor residents are prepared for them.
Yesterday I highlighted one of the most important things for homeowners in those areas; a tiny bit of seismic retrofitting can be the difference between a home being a total loss requiring demolition and virtually no structural damage (http://on.fb.me/1fRfOlh). Today I want to highlight the number 1 thing that everyone in earthquake country, or anyone at risk from any disaster should do; know where your water is.
Lots of agencies give solid lists of disaster supplies; food, radios, flashlights with batteries, first aid kits, etc., and water is usually at the top, but water deserves to be on another level. It deserves this whole post to highlight it.
Water is heavy. It takes so much energy to move water around and humans need so much of it that water is probably the most important resource to find to allow long-term space travel. People need huge amounts of water just to survive.
If you’re reading this right now, ask yourself…what would you do if your water became undrinkable for a week? Now ask yourself…what if everyone in your neighborhood was also hunting for water? What about your whole city?
The average given for normal climates is that humans need at least 1 gallon (~4 liters) of water per person per day, but in hot climates or families with young children can need over twice that amount as a minimum. Now imagine half a million or a million people needing clean water…that’s the situation where things become a true disaster. If the current water infrastructure breaks down, what would a million people do for water? How do you bring in emergency water for a million people?
The lack of water after an earthquake is a potential problem for both the developed and the developing world; both areas can suffer the same issues. Earthquakes are specifically damaging to concrete infrastructure that is commonly used in water and sewage pipes. Even if water pipes are made of metal and survive a quake, the water sources can be contaminated by sewage and whatever supplies the pressure (electricity) can be lost as well.
When Los Angeles first ran through their “Shakeout” scenario, a simulation of how emergency resources would respond both during and after an earthquake, the companies and public sector institutions involved in distributing water realized that not only would their entire infrastructure be destroyed but it would take years to rebuild the system. When the San Andreas Fault ruptures in California, it will several years for running water to be restored throughout Los Angeles.
In the long term, those water needs will be met either by imported supplies or by people evacuating the area, but what about the short term? A city like Los Angeles has 10 million+ people in the area, all of who will need a gallon of water per day. If a city loses its water supply entirely, it will take time before emergency resources can make it into that area, and water is hard to transport. It’s heavy, it takes up a lot of space, you can’t just fly planes full of water into a city to supply 10 million people, and the roads that might be used to distribute emergency water will likely be damaged too.
I’m not going to recommend any brands, but a number of websites have 55 gallon or larger water storage barrels available for sale. If you have a family and you own a home, stick one or two of those in the corner of your property. Use a search engine. If you rent and you would worry about a water barrel bursting or falling through the floor, look for some closet space, clean out some bottles, and put some water in there (instructions at link at bottom).
After hurricane Katrina, clean water rapidly became one of the most pressing needs for the remaining people trapped in New Orleans. Water supplies were gone within days and it took time to figure out where people were and to get emergency supplies into the area. That was the case in a city that had evacuation warnings issued before the event, so the majority of the population was gone. An earthquake strikes suddenly; there’s no time to evacuate the city beforehand, so imagine that same scene of people desperately needing water except in a population 100x larger.
This reminder is most important for earthquake country, but really it’s important everywhere. Floods, severe weather events, fires, lots of things can make it useful to have stored water. If I lived in Earthquake country, I’d have 2 of those 55-gallon drums in my back yard and I’d circulate the water through them every 6 months to keep it fresh. Outside of earthquake country, I still make sure I know where my water supply will come from even if I haven’t yet invested in the drums.
-JBB
Image credit: http://www.navy.mil/viewGallery.asp?id=3&page=505&r=4
Read more: http://www.ready.gov/kit http://www.ready.gov/water