No water in Jackson, MS

ClareBroommaker's picture

So there is basically no clean drinking water in Jackson, Mississippi. They are in big trouble, right? This water crisis has me walking around in bug-eyed awe, and re-thinking what I did yesterday (got rid of some glass bottles of water!). Yikes. Advocate for your local water systems to be kept in good order.

So far, even in years of tremendous flooding of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers which are the sources of my city's water, we have not had difficult outages. We did have, just this year, a scare with some untreated flood water getting into the system, but we lucked out that the water kept testing safe. Had it not, it would have affected a huge swath of the city.

I've increased my water storage gradually. Having obtained more secure storage than cleaned-out 750 mL wine bottles is what made me feel comfortable yesterday to get rid of the wine bottles. Today, though, I wonder....

Yeah; dear Jackson!

Anyone else particularly thinking about water today?

You need a week's worth of water, at minimum.
But what is a week? The Red Cross (I think) suggests a gallon per person per day.
That's not much! It doesn't cover pets, cooking, dishes, laundry, or personal hygiene beyond hand-washing. You can barely brush your teeth.

I'd add to water storage wet-wipes and hand sanitizer (for personal hygiene), and paper plates and disposable silverware to limit dishwashing.

Water issues can crop up unexpectedly. Decades ago, when we were still in York, SC, a part in the reservoir broke. The town was instantly without potable water. It took the town several days to get to muddy, light-brown, heavily chlorinated water. You could always flush a toilet but you couldn't bathe or wash laundry or dishes (permanent stains resulted).
It took almost two weeks (IRRC) to get back to normal.

Since the outage was limited in area, within a few days, Walmart and the groceries were piled high with bottled water.

I learned from that: always have a week's worth of water, one gallon per person minimum, on hand.

But as I said, five people plus pets means for one week: 7 gallons times 7 days equals 49 gallons of water and there's no room for error.