[img]396|left|Alex Campbell||no_popup[/img]Dateline Boston — Last Saturday there was a water main break in Boston and surrounding towns. Seems a coupling on a seven-year-old pipe broke, and untreated water had to be drawn from local reservoirs. A boil water order was put into effect; two million people were affected. It was described in the news as “catastrophic.” The governor declared a state of emergency.
[img]850|left|||no_popup[/img]We were told to boil water for one minute before drinking. Showers were okay; washing hands was not. We had to use boiled or bottled water for brushing teeth. There was some instruction about adding 1/8 of a teaspoon of bleach when washing dishes, but I never figured that out. Dishwashers were okay if there was a “sanitize” button.
I heard that the water that was flowing into homes on Saturday night was equivalent to dirty pond water. A friend remarked that we were all showering with goose poop. Fantastic.
I sort of laughed off the experience on Saturday. After all, this kind of thing happened on my TV screen, not in my neighborhood. Whenever I saw a news story about people boiling water in Suburban Far Away Land, I’d think…Wait a minute. You know what? I didn’t think. Didn’t give it a second thought. It didn’t register.
It registered on Sunday, you’d better believe it, somewhere between brushing my teeth using a bottle of water and trying to boil a giant pot of tap water on my two burner hotplate. A lot of water was wasted. I felt pangs of guilt when I doused my toothbrush with the bottled water. By having the water in a container, you could actually measure how much water was used for the simplest tasks.
I went over to a friend’s house, and we were talking about the water leak. She told me her son was going around saying, “This is a problem!” She pointed out that it wasn’t a problem. A problem was not having water at all. This was an inconvenience. How true. I didn’t realize how much I took clean water for granted until I didn’t have any.
The worst part for me was the dishes. I don’t have an oven, just a hotplate. So heating a large pot of water was really hard. Every time the pot got hot, but not boiling, the safety mechanism on the hotplate would be activated, and it would turn itself off. The pot never got to the rolling boil for the one minute that was required. I figured I’d just put the pot in the sink and throw some bleach in, using it to wash dishes. Well, I put way too much bleach in, and the water was too hot to touch. I didn’t have any “safe” cold water to add to the hot water to make it warm, plus I didn’t have another pot of “safe” water to rinse the dishes. I tried washing some small things, towel-drying them to get them out of the way. Later I read they were supposed to be air dried. Go figure. I ended up just piling the dishes in a plastic tub and hoped the ban would be lifted soon.
My cat Shelby was confused. She usually drinks her water from the bathtub faucet. Several times a day she’d hop in the bathtub as usual, and look at me. I kept apologizing, and tried pouring bottled water right next to the faucet. She sniffed it, made a muffled meow noise, and turned away. In desperation, she drank from the bowl of bottled water I left for her in the tub.
Preparing for the Future, Too
I freaked out big time when I found out that schools wouldn’t be closed, and I’d be responsible for washing the hands of twenty preschoolers with bottled water. I went in to school early on Monday and boiled a huge pot of water for reserve. Giant bottles of water had been brought in from everywhere, it seemed. So actually having enough water wasn’t a problem. The trick was finding smaller containers that were easier to work with. I did, and developed a system. We washed hands with pitchers of “safe” water, then used hand sanitizer after that. Take that, goose poop!
I removed the paints, markers and play dough. I figured the fewer times we had to wash hands, the better. The kids got creative with crayons and stickers. They didn’t even notice the difference. Snack time was no problem. Doing the dishes was easy with our “sanitize’ button on the dishwasher. I even did the dishes that didn’t fit in the dishwasher in our extra big sink with two pots of warm water. Ahh…
The day went off without a hitch, and my S.O. and I got 24 bottles of water in the evening so we’d be prepared for whatever happened in the next few days. Which turned out to be the ban being lifted the next morning. YAY!
The final step in the process was to run the faucets to flush out any untreated water. I ran the cold water for one minute, the hot water for fifteen minutes. Then my neighbor knocked on my door and said he couldn’t take a shower because there was no hot water. Whoops.
It’s been a day since our safe water has been restored. I’ve thought about many things from this experience:
1. I will not take basic human necessities for granted.
2. I am now prepared for an emergency.
3. In my life, I really have nothing to complain about. Nothing.
4. I will not use the 22 bottles of water we have left over to play a bowling game, even though they would make great bowling pins.
Water is precious. Please don’t waste it. If you need a bottle of water to go with your red velvet cake from last week, stop by. I have both.
Ms. Campbell may be contacted at campbellalexandra@hotmail.com
