The Oil Drum: Canada | The Round-Up: November 17th 2006

9 comments on The Round-Up: November 17th 2006

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Syntec on November 17, 2006 - 8:30pm

If anyone has seen the news, you'd note that approx 2.5 million people can't drink the water here in Vancouver and about 80,000 were and are possibly still without power in surrounding areas.

I know this is nothing at all like Katrina or other tragedies, however, I thought I would share the absolute surreal sensation it is to find oneself helping friends find water in a major city of a 1st world country.

I say friends because thanks to the advice of Drummers here at TOD and LATOC - my supplies of both water and power were secured long before.

As many know, the westcoast is receiving record rain and the watersheds that feed the city are basically overwhelmed.

The water advisory came out around 3ish and by 5, the shelves were empty in every store. Not Safeway, not IGA, not Shoppers, not London Drugs, not even Costco had any water left to sell. This was not reported by the MSM.

We have all seen similar, though more extreme variations of this phenomenon in the likes of Katrina -people falling on stores like locusts- however it was not until yesterday, that I could fully appreciate the repercussions of a woefully unprepared, just-in-time populace pressed into a moderate crisis over the most basic of commodities.

And the forecast calls for more rain.

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porsena on November 17, 2006 - 9:02pm

It's good to hear you had water put away. Brings a nice, literal meaning to 'saving for a rainy day'.

I hope your supplies are good for a week, though it's anyones guess if that's how long it will take the turbidity to settle. Once the overland flow has got out of the rivers and creeks feeding Lake Capilano, the turbidity should settle to 'acceptable' levels within a couple of days. The ground will be completely saturated though, so more rain soon will delay this desirable event.

Several interviewees on the TV news I've been watching said they'd not seen anything like Wednesday's storm hit their community before. We can't attribute the event to global warming but we can say that GW makes an event like this more likely. Unfortunately, I think we can expect more of the same.

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Stoneleigh on November 18, 2006 - 12:43am

CBC radio was talking about water supplies selling out before shops could even get new deliveries into the store. It all seems quite surreal from the other side of the country. I agree that the just-in-time system may well lead to more incidents like this in the future. After all, if shoppers are prepared to come to blows over an insufficient supply of Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls at Christmas time, what will they do if food is ever in short supply.

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oilmanbob on November 19, 2006 - 9:38am

I was raised in hurricane country. As long as city water is clean and functioning fill up any spare containers. Go outside and get a bucket of flood water to flush toilets. And if its still raining just sit containers in the outdoor areas to harvest rain. Disinfect water with bleach or boiling for five minutes. Don't let the kids wade in the water and clean it off yourself, dogs and cats don't have their sewage treated and fecal coliform bacteria is a big disentery cause.
The suns gonna shine in your back door someday!

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Stoneleigh on November 19, 2006 - 12:43pm

Even though I don't live in a storm-prone area, I still don't trust city water supplies. Incidents like the Walkerton water treatment (or lack thereof) scandal or the accident at Camelford (in Cornwall, UK, where a chemical discharge into the municipal water supply caused a lot of chronic neurological problems) make me wonder about water supplies under the difficult conditions that could prevail in a few years time. My view of the future includes a global economic depression and maintaining a clean water supply under cash-strapped conditions may be difficult.

I bought a farm on well and septic, because I like to have what control I can over the essentials of my own existence. My well pump runs off my renewable energy system and I filter my water using the same kind of simple (low-tech, no moving parts, no power required) water filtration system that aid agencies use in the third world. They come in different sizes and mine is the smallest (The Big Berkey by British Berkefeld). There are different filters - black (activated charcoal) and white (ceramic). The white filters can filter tens of thousands of gallons and the black ones significantly less, although the black ones filter out more potentially harmful things. At $250 for the unit and $100 for extra filters, it's not an expensive option compared to almost all other water treatment possibilities.

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