It's Christmas morning and although I'm sure that there are better things for me to be doing I wanted to take another stab at this.

One of the things that amazes me is how incredibly unready most people are to deal with even a minor hiccup in their day to day lives.  Watching TV the other night and there had been a local water main break and the town water supply was unavailable that day.  They interviewed a man who was almost literally beside himself because there was no drinking water, no water to wash dishes, no water to flush his toilet and he just didn't know that he was going to be able to cope!  Most of his questions to the reporter were aimed at finding out how soon "someone" was going to come around with water supplies for the duration of the "emergency"!

My first thought was unless the break is in your cellar it's not an emergency  It's an inconvenience.  A few months ago my water well pump had to be turned off overnight. Since it happened to be raining I just put a bucket under the edge of my roof and used that water to flush the toilet with.  Drinking water was no issue since I have a good supply stored away. Actually felt pretty smart to use the rain and not waste the stored water for flushing.  But this gentleman was in a total quandary and had no idea how he was going to deal with the situation which, by the way, may have been going to last at least 5 hours!

So lets take this whole concept of preparedness in small doses and start with water.  Do you have some stored?  Doesn't have to be in high tech expensive water containers...what do you do with your plastic juice bottles when they are empty?  Is there any good reason not to clean them out and fill them with water and a couple drops of bleach and just tuck them away?  Or catch a sale at the local Walmart on the 5 gallon containers.  Do you have another source of water close by?  A well or a stream or a pond?  Do you know how much bleach it would take to make any of that water safe to drink?  Or do you have a way to boil it for a couple minutes after maybe straining it through a coffee filter to get out the big particulates?  How long should you boil it?  Hint:  a hard boil for 1 minute up to 2,000 feet of elevation or 3 minutes if you live higher than that.  Then just let it cool and you're good to go.

A gallon on water only takes 8-16 drops of regular household bleach to make it safe if you're not boiling it.  You might want to double that if the water is cloudy.  Shake it up well (and get some on the cap, the rim and the threads) and let it stand for 30 minutes.  It will smell a little bleach-y but that will disperse in a while.  And believe me nothing will make you sicker than some of the little bugs that live in unclean water!

So now you have safe water and you can sit back, have a drink of water and make the rest of the plan!  You don't have to do it all at once, you know!