No (Potable) Water for the New Year - A Dry Run

Last evening, a water main in town broke, sending a flood of water down the hill into neighbor's homes and flooding the streets, creating a skating rink of ice. When I initially heard about this, I filled a ton of water bottles and glasses on the off-chance that we'd lose access to water. I didn't want to have to dip into our emergency water stores.

Not too long afterwards, we got the warning that the City of Roslyn was under a Boil Advisory. Twenty-four hours later, the water main has been fixed, but we still can't use the water without boiling. We are definitely lucky in that we never lost water or water pressure, most likely because we are above the break. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for many people in town where they had no water or very little water pressure. Or were flooded. A neighboring town offered a water fill-up station for those impacted more than we were.  

All that said, we are still able to run the dishwasher with the "Sanitizing" setting on, run the washing machine and take showers. Although, I felt like we could lose water access at any moment.

I considered this a bit of a dry run, with pretty minimal impact. Others were not so fortunate. But, even just having to boil water to use for drinking water, brushing teeth and cooking was still a reminder that we are always mere minutes away from losing a very valuable and precious resource.

Since we have a ton of snow outside, I took advantage of the fast cooling by putting our pots of boiled water outside on the deck to make the turnaround from boiling to using very quick! Once the water was cooled, I ran it through our pitcher water filter (for good measure) and also to make it easier to pour out of than the pots. 

Worse case scenario if we ran out of water for a more extended period of time? Well, we would have used the water filling station for potable water. Cooking would have been limited to things that needed minimal rinsing. And, if bathing were an issue, I have access at the gym in another town and a ton of body wipes that I have on-hand for use after bike races. 

We do have a year-round natural spring a few miles away with drinkable water if things get super dire. Between that and the water filter (and a more turbo hiking-style water filter) and at least we would have drinkable water. And, that's only if the grocery stores ran dry.

It's not a bad idea to run through the mental exercise of this sort. Because you never know when and/if the SHTF. Hopefully, everything will be back to normal soon, as local businesses had to shut down during this holiday weekend. And, after the water clears, I'm hoping that those impacted by the water running through their properties dry out quickly.