Good morning sisters,
Mark had such a good time with you all at the special RS meeting on Saturday. It sounds like LOTS was accomplished!!!
OK, so you have or are working on getting your bags/containers, you have underwear and a change of clothes for everyone in your family. Now we are going to work on WATER.
The rule of thumb for water is: 1 gallon per person per day. In Mark and my situation, therefore, we figure 2 people times 3 days and add some for dogs...so we came up with needing 7 gallons (we have little dogs). So do the math for your family and see what you come up with.
Living where we do, the water you can usually take right out of the tap. So coming up with water is not the challenge. However, what to put the water in can be a challenge. The containers can also be a $ item.
The other rule of thumb is that it needs to be quickly transportable. Those of you at the Saturday activity heard that the Bastrop people were given 1 minute to get out of their homes. Remember a 72 hour kit is pretty much a "grab and go" arrangement.
And water is heavy, so you have to solve the transportability issue. So this week you will need to study water containers and decide what you want.
The other challenge can be the purification issue. I have taken the following quote from the Josephine County Oregon Emergency Preparedness Handbook. "Purify water by boiling it for 5 to 10 minutes or by adding drops of household bleach containing 5.25% hypochlorite. FEMA recommends 16 drops of bleach per gallon of water. Water purification tablets or a filter system such as those designed for campers and backpackers also work." My understanding is that if you are using distilled or nursery water, that this process has already been done. I have also seen much smaller amounts of bleach recommended in other sites. I am no water expert. So I again will leave this to your own research, judgement and prayer as to how to prepare your water.
Here is the link to the handbook I just referenced. We have found it to be a very good guide to preparedness.
For those of you who were at the Saturday activity, you saw the water containers Mark and I are currently using. The last revision we made to our 72 hour kits, we had decided to simply pack gallon containers of distilled water into our rolling duffel bags. Bad idea. Only 1 out of the 7 made it through the 6 months. So we have invested in two more durable stackable containers. Our plan is that they stack on top of each other and are strapped to our dolly, so that we can either heft them into the back of our jeep or can pull them behind us.
As, I am sure you are realizing, 72 hour kits are all individually designed to meet the needs of your particular family. So please share with us how you address getting the water needs met for your family in your 72 hour kit.
Assignments:
RED Team: Again put $5/every 2 people in your family into your envelope in your cardboard box for your 72 kit containers. Determine how much water you will need and how you are going to store and transport it. Look around your home for storage containers you can repurpose for water. Until you get/can afford what you want, start cleaning out those containers that your milk, soda, etc. comes in and fill them with water and put them in another cardboard box with handles in the sides, so you can pick them up and go if you need to.
YELLOW and BLUE Team: Review your water needs and transportation needs. Do you have enough water? Has it been changed out in the last 6 months? Is it in containers that are transportable. If you have suggestions of things that have worked for you in regards to water storage, remember we have sisters here who are just beginning the water storage journey and would love to have the benefit of your experience, so please feel free to share your stories with us.
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