Camano City Community Club Class A Small Water System: Before, During, and After: Your Emergency Preparedness Guide

Island living is unique. Here, we embrace co-existing with the wildlife we share land with. We experience the most unpredictable weather in the world. And we experience why it is important to never take for granted the most precious gift of all: water.

Come storm season, islanders know to batten down the hatches. If the winds are coming from the south, odds are little damage will follow. But when the winds stream in off the ocean, rip over Whidbey Island and head directly here from the west, they will slap us fairly hard. Trees will come down. Power and cable will be out. Mother nature's forced camp out.

And while the weather here on the island is difficult to predict, when there's an advisory for strong winds days in advance, we know to take them serious enough to throw in a couple loads of laundry, pick up a few cans of ethanol free gas for the generator, and recharge all the rechargeable flashlights.

But did you also know that you should be preparing for a water outage?

Prepare

To prepare for an event, begin reserving clean tap water in glass jars or clean food grade containers. As a guide, one gallon of water per day per person (and pet!) should be set aside (you can safely store treated drinking water for several months).
Catch up on laundry if there's enough time before the arrival of the storm and run the dishwasher.
Stock up on disposable tableware and frozen dinners either purchased or prepared at home (during prolonged outages without water or on a boil water advisory, unwashed pots, pans, and dishes will attract pests).
Fill a clean tub with water or several clean buckets with water (full, but still be able to carry). Use this water to flush the toilet, to scoop into a sink basin for sponge bathing and handwashing essentials, to put in a cup and use to rinse when brushing teeth. During the growing season, fill buckets with the garden house outside (and toss in a mosquito dunk if standing even for a short period of time).
Make sure all taps are off and there are no leaks. If you discover a leak, make a temporary repair or even temporarily shut off water to that leak if possible.

Conserve

During the event, once power is lost, begin conserving at full throttle.

This isn't the time to fill your pool, play in the sprinklers, bathe your driveway.
Your laundry machine needs a rest, give it a vacation until the power is restored.
Be gentle on your septic system especially if you aren't using backup power. Use those buckets of water to flush flushable solids after each use, and one after every third or fourth deposit of flushable liquids.
During the growing season, use the buckets of water set aside for watering edible plants.
Bust out the Chinette and Dixie cups and take a night off from dishwashing duties.
Don't let the tap run while brushing teeth or washing hands.
Set a timer before getting into the shower (and you are catching the cold water in a bucket for later, right?) and turn off the water between lathering up and rinsing off (skip the repeat, this is camping mode, y'all!). Guys should be setting the timer for 3 minutes, gals and kids for 5.
Keep the dog from chasing white striped black cats, this is not the time for a bath!
While you're at it, let Tom, the outdoor cat, know that he's been disinvited from the Trash Panda picnic.

It's important to note that this isn't the time to break out your stored drinking water. This water is on reserve should you lose water service.

Stop

and Pretend You Are Stranded In The Desert

Should you lose water service, stop all consumption of tap water immediately.

Report loss of service to the emergency number: (360) 630-0970

Begin Boil Water protocol. Continue using the boil water protocol for 96 hours after service is restored (click on the links for other posts we've made regarding boil water protocol).

Loss of water during a power outage can also mean that our reservoirs are dangerously low. This is when those reserve buckets of water, the stored drinking water, are to be cracked open. But be very careful about your usage.

Recovery

Once the storm has passed, power is restored, and water is flowing, it's time to chop wood, do damage control, file the insurance claims, but hold off on laundry, soaking in a bubble bath, or playing in the sprinklers. We need to get the reservoirs back up to full capacity which can take two to three days to completely restore.

If you didn't lose water service during the outage, there will be no need to boil water. However, if service was lost, the boil water goes into effect for 96 hours from restoration of service. This provides our service technicians enough time to draw samples, transport it to a state authorized testing lab where cultures must cultivate for a full 24 hours (and during massive storms, labs may not be able to get to that sample for some time after). Should the results test positive, additional treatment is required. Should they be inconclusive, requiring more testing, this extends the period out to the full 96 hour mark.

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We'll be back later with a catchy phrase to help remember these 4 simple steps to sustainable living on an island. Either that or we've hailed aliens trying to come up with a reverse acronym, which would be some 🐄💩 (thank Resident Alien and the author for that one!)