Water is essential. It is a requirement for human life as well as a major contributor to hygiene and sanitation. It would be difficult to say that anyone ‘has enough water’ when it can be used for so many purposes and is needed in significant quantities daily. Because of this essential quality it will be the first of The Basics being covered.
There are two main considerations for water: fit for use and volume. Let’s discuss these in detail.
Fit for Use
Water is versatile. It can be used for a variety of things, but it really comes down to two main classifications: potable and non-potable.
Potable water, also known as drinking water, is what we most often think of because it is the most obvious use of water. It is what sustains life. We need a certain amount of water daily to maintain life and this amount changes due to environmental factors, which will be discussed later.
Potable water is generally taken for granted in the Western world – and it should be as freely available as it is. However, since we generally take it for granted, we often overlook the infrastructure necessary to maintain this resource.
Water is captured from natural (or reclaimed) sources and shipped to a treatment facility. That treatment facility relies on a modern infrastructure to get the power and supplies needed to clean the water. Even more infrastructure in the form of people, plants and vehicles are required to deliver the water through unseen miles of pipes.
It wouldn’t take much to disrupt this system and it is a miracle on modern life that it isn’t disrupted more often.
When the system is disrupted, or when untreated water is encountered, it is considered non-potable. This is water found in puddles on the street, in most wild sources such as streams and lakes, or even in backyard swimming pools. This water can contain contaminants which make it unsafe to consume.
Unless you expressly know that water has been made safe to drink it should be considered non-potable.
Non-potable water still has plenty of uses. For the most part it can be used to water livestock, especially if it is from a running source (as opposed to a stagnant pond). It can generally be used to water a garden or crops as long as it is not suspected of being contaminated with harmful substances that can be absorbed through the plants and passed on to you. If potable resources are very limited, non-potable water can even be used for the first round of washing dishes as long as clean water is used for the final rinse.
Discussing the limit of resources brings us to the other consideration.
Volume
By volume, we mean that we must ensure that we have enough water for the intended purpose. Since we generally don’t store non-potable water for household use, the conversation will focus primarily on potable water. Making non-potable water potable will be covered in another post.
You will find many guidelines that state you need x amount of water stored per person. If we were all the same, doing the same things and living in the same environments, that kind of guidance may be helpful. Unfortunately things are always that cut-and-dry – especially in an emergency situation.
For all intents and purposes, if you have the ability to store water, store it. Store as much as you reasonably can. As a minimum, the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends three days of water for each member of the household. They have also released a guideline of storing one gallon of potable water per person per day. Based on their literature, that recommendation covers basic hygiene needs as well as greater than normal consumption for “[p]eople in hot environments, children, nursing mothers, and ill people”. They suggest having three days worth of water for each member of the household.
While this is a great place to start, it appears to come with an underlying assumption that such people are relatively inactive, potentially in a temperature controlled environment and/or know techniques for conservation of water resources. As someone experienced with working outside in Texas heat and rock climbing in an Arizona summer, I can say that one gallon of water per day used for drinking, cooking and cleaning will likely leave you dehydrated.
Dehydration has a number of negative impacts on the human body – up to and including death. So you can use the FEMA recommendation as a baseline. However, in order to try to make our recommendation apply to a broader range of situations, we at PREP Academy suggest having a little more water on hand and there is some variability to it.
In order to ensure that you have all the water resources needed, we recommend the following:
If there are three or more people in your group, store two gallons per person for each day of preparedness. If there are less than three people in your group, store three gallons per person per day. This should cover water for hydration as well as for hygiene and cooking purposes.
The underlying assumption is that in an emergency situation, you will be more active than normal. Not only will this increase your water needs, such activity will cause heavier, more frequent breathing and result in the sensation of thirst more often. Having a little additional water will help with both the physical and psychological aspect of quenching that thirst.
Also, when water is shared across multiple people the proportion can be somewhat reduced. Washing dishes for one person or four people takes about the same volume of water so a single person needs to storage a larger proportion of water.
As a side note, remember that your pets also need water, so include them in your plans.
As far as how many days of preparedness you will need, that mostly comes down to personal preference – and is confined somewhat by the area you have to store water. FEMA recommends three days. The majority of federal responses result in responders being onsite and active within three days, so the recommendation accommodates that time frame. However, some responses take longer and the further you are away from a metropolitan area (where the bulk of the resources are focused), the more of a delay you may have in receiving aid – if it is coming. A week of storage would not be out of the question. Take into consideration though, water is heavy and bulky. Even a week (7 days) of water for a family of four (2 gallons per person, 4 people) ends up being around a 55 gallon barrel in volume. That equates to over 450 pounds of water. So do what you can, but realize that water requires substantial space.
Finally, if you have excess water, you may also have the ability to help others in need. While we should all have plenty to help ourselves get through hardship, we should also be good members of our communities and help those in need where we can.
We’ll circle back around to other aspects of water in later posts, but this should give you enough to start you in the right direction.