Then Came Rita

I personally have saved tap water and made my own ice. I didn't buy any. I was forced to buy something from Walmart anyway. First thing this morning: dead battery. Walmart was the only place nearby that had any.

I think the bathtub may be the point -- what's handy about gallons of water is the containers, with lids and everything.

(Umpteenth reminder to self, stock a full emergency kit already.) (Not for Rita, just in general.)

Haven't read the whole thread - edgar, are you staying????

Yes, I'm staying. They didn't include us in the evacuation order and even moved some folks from Houston into the Tomball Hospital. We are getting out of the mobile home and staying in an apartment. Tomball is high and far from the expected surge, so I don't have to worry about that.

good point, gus. When gus and I and a few others folks here were young, we drank tap water regularly. None of this 69 cents or 99 cents a bottle stuff. If push came to shove, we would store tap water in empty milk cartons. And we would drink that. When dit the notion start that there is something wrong with tap water?

drinking tap water builds character...




edited to add this little-known factoid:
my avatar is actually a picture of tap water, taken with a scanning electron microscope...

A national known bottle water brand fills their bottles from a local municipal water supply.

From the news reports that I've been hearing, one would not have much luck leaving Houston now anyways. Hours of lineups.

Well, realjohn, I too have always been fine with tap water. Especially now, as it is quite wonderful here in north north. But, across the land, some tap water does taste icky.

I've also learned to appreciate bubbly waters from across the sea. Bubbly waters that are local are ok, Calistoga water, for example, but they are sort of tame. Some bubbly waters from germany and italy and I guess many other places have a lot of different elements in them, as I learned from looking at a water menu once, about five pages long, with charts, in Viterbo.

Some tap water is lame indeed, or used to be.

Sorry to go off on a Fine Water tangent, ironic in the circumstances.

Given that I could fill a bathtub and various other chambers, I'd consider buying fruit juice or gatorade type stuff more important.

Edgar! I am SO happy to hear you'll be in an apartment! God hates mobile homes, you know. Take it from an Okie...we know.

Shewolf...the reporting bothers me, too. Mostly because crews were right there to take these people to safe places and they still wouldn't go. Not that TV reporting doesn't sensationalize things...of course it does. Still, I do understand that most of us have questioned WHY everyone wouldn't leave, so it's logical that a reporter would want to get answers by interviewing some of them.

At least I heard they took people WITH their pets this time. All the reports of emaciated animals roaming the streets of New Orleans now makes me physically ill.

Er, that may be, Noddy, but not all of the small bottling companies listed in that menu I saw do that, given test results.

God doesn't hate all mobile homes, there's a whole batch of architects trying to rig up smart ones, I have dozens of links on that --- though I am not presently aware of any zoned into hurricane resistance. Unfortunately, the new manufactured homes are out of a lot of our price ranges, certainly mine. But that may all come down in $ as they work it out.

I suppose I should start a thread on water, certainly not appropriate here, and one on mobile homes. Not tonight, but nag me if I forget, at least re the mobile homes.

I should add that I personally believe in living lightly on the land, am sort of naturally anti megahouse, if not everywhere, on cliffs and beaches and lowland and many other lands.

Yeah, now don't you be forgetting now.

I'll be watching, watching..... :wink:

I have had two friends who have been tv anchors, so I have some sympathy, but geezlouise, the scurrilously false sympathetic smileytones going for sensation really get me down.

The thing with bathtubs for possible drinking water in these sorts of circumstances is that I worry about holes in the roof, that water getting contaminated in sundry ways if the boundaries of the house are breached. In that sort of situation I'd probably ideally want both -- lots of plastic jugs filled with water, plus bathtub and such.

Plus, as I started to post and edited myself, the stuff in bottles is sterile by definition, until it is opened. I can imagine sterile gains currency over time.

I drink bottled water because the buildings where I work have twenty year old copper pipes. I don't want to drink leached copper, as a measure to help fight against cancer.

Bottled water has lots of advantages to it.