Posted on 06/13/2011 8:40:08 AM PDT by Kartographer
Get a kit. Make a plan. Be informed. For years, Evonne Richards had seen the signs and read the messages urging her to prepare for an emergency.
A mother of four, she found it easy to push off the task. After all, the only threat that seemed likely in the landlocked 21 acres where the family had lived 27 years was a house fire.
In September, she finally printed off the checklist from ready.gov. She stockpiled about 60 gallons of water in empty milk and juice containers, adding a dash of bleach to each.
She bought a three-day supply of dried beans, brown rice, oatmeal and raisins. She stored gas for their generator, fuel for the camping stove and extra batteries.
Then came April 27, late evening. Richards, her husband, Bill, and youngest son, Ellis, watched their computer as storms moved in. Their three oldest children were not home.
Richards walked over to the door and opened it.
Something seems weird, she told her husband.
He screamed, Get under the stairs.
In seconds, the tornado twisted and tossed thousands of tree missiles, cascading them like dominoes into the living room and across the driveway. The whirlwind wiped out dozens of their neighbors homes
(Excerpt) Read more at timesfreepress.com ...
PING!!
OK folks, do NOT use old plastic milk jugs to store water. You can never get them clean of all the milk proteins and your water will rapidly become undrinkable. I suspect this person has found that out already.
” OK folks, do NOT use old plastic milk jugs to store water. You can never get them clean of all the milk proteins and your water will rapidly become undrinkable. I “
There are plenty of uses, even in a Survival situation, for non-potable water — toilets still need to be flushed, and eating utensils (and persons) still need to be kept clean and sanitary...
I live in an area that experiences frequent power (and therefore pump) outages, and I learned, after my first time around, to keep separate stockpiles of ‘drinking water’ and ‘flushing water’....
Perhaps you can help me on this. I have a 40 gallon hot water heater filled with 40 gallons of pure, filtered water. Why should I fill up more jugs?
“She bought a three-day supply of dried beans, brown rice, oatmeal and raisins.”
Three pounds of beans and rice, a box of oatmeal and a six pack of raisins is noteworthy?
Melancholy and I had this exact discussion a while ago and he described a method he used wherein he was able to store water safely in milk jugs, which I had thought not possible. I always figured milk jug water could be used for washing purposes only. Maybe he’ll chime in with his method.
How do you get the water out of the heater if there’s no water pressure?
Oh, duh, the bottom drain!
Gravity.
Ummm, yes.
Here’s a true story.
A few years ago hub was working on our water system and said water would be off for a few hours. (Our system is a well and we fill up large tanks of water periodically from the well.)
I knew that anything DH embarks upon always takes much longer than estimated, so I filled up every available vessel in the house in the short amount of time I had. What with buckets, jugs, large pots and so on, I had just about 53 gallons of water.
We used that water very sparingly - I could wash no dishes, cooked very simply (for instance, used the water that I washed the rice with for washing hands, and then for flushing the toilet, etc), we did minimal “bucket baths” or sponge baths, flushed only for solid stuff.
After three days the water came back on, I had about 2 quarts of water left, and we and the house were filthy.
So, 40 gallons would be bare survival for a few days. You won’t have enough to really clean anything, bathe, flush the toilet more than once or twice a day if that, do any real cooking, no washing dishes, etc.
If that’s a good level of survival - at most, 3 days of extremely minimal water use, fine.
I like to have much, much more leeway than that. BTDT.
I noticed that too.
If people don’t normally have some basics like that on hand anyway, they must live in NYC.
I'd like to learn about it. Thank you.
If anyone knows where I can get an affordable water pump (hand) for my 2 inch well, please let me know!
How deep is your well?
Where possible, an old fashioned hand pump in the yard can be decorative and functional. It didn’t kill grandma and grandpa and it won’t kill me. In some places county government provides testing of well water for a small fee.
Clean them immediately after finishing the milk. I’ve had potable water stashed in the woods for years. Carry a canteen in and pour whatever I don’t drink in to replace what I drink from jugs. That said, a lot of people would last about 12 hours in my world, so YMMV.
I would like to know as well. Our well is 600 feet deep. Back in 2002 our shallow well went dry in the drought we were experiencing at the time. We were without water for almost FOUR months. NOT a fun time.
Turns out it wasn’t him, it was someone else, maybe with a name beginning with “M”, who had a vacation house in, IIRC, Virginia.
Wish my memory worked better!
I think he said that he washed them with very hot water and detergent, let dry, and then filled them, and used them in the vacation house with no problem.
But I vote for non-milk containers, I’ve never been able to get them clean enough.
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