Bleached as, bro.

Everyone always mentions using bleach to purify water in emergency situations.  Personally, I'd recommed only using bleach if you have no way to boil water - ie. as a last resort.

Boiling water is by far the easiest way to make water that has been contaminated by microrganisms safe for drinking.  There's not much you can do about chemical contaminants like heavy metals, unless you have some serious equipment, but for making water collected from your roof, from a creek, or the stored water that you forgot about for a few years drinkable, you just can't go past a good boil.

You don't even have to boil it for any length of time.  If you happen to have a thermometer, you could have your water at 70 degrees C for 30 minutes, and that would kill everything.  If you bring the temperature up to 85 degrees, then it's good after just 3 minutes.  So by the time you've actually got the water up to the boiling point, everything was probably dead a minute ago, and the time it takes to get the water back down to a temperature that's drinkable without burning your mouth, you've killed everything several times over.

However, if you haven't got any way to heat your water, you can resort to household bleach. 

BUT - and there's a definite "but" here.

Check the label on your bleach first!

Household bleach is typically between 5 percent and 6 percent chlorine.  Check how strong your particular brand is.   The table below gives the amounts of 5-6% chlorine bleach solution to add to how much water - it's really not a lot!

 Also, not all bleach is just bleach.   There's a massive proliferation of household cleaners out there, and they are not all the same.  Some of them contain dyes, some contain perfumes, and some contain detergents and other additives which can be seriously not good for you, even in the small amounts you'd be using.  Always read the label first, and if it's unclear as to what else has been added to the bleach, don't use it in your water.

Mix your plain unscented bleach with the water thoroughly and then leave it for at least 30 minutes before using (60 minutes if the water is cloudy or very cold)  to let the approriate chemical reactions do their thing.

Another point to note - Cryptosporidium (a rather nasty diarrhea-causing pathogen) is highly resistant to chlorine, so if you are aware that it's a potential contaminant, boiling is always the best option.

Treating Water with a 5-6 Percent Liquid Chlorine Bleach Solution
Volume of Water to be Treated	Treating Clear/Cloudy Water: Bleach Solution to Add	Treating Cloudy, Very Cold, or Surface Water: Bleach Solution to Add
1 litres	3 drops	5 drops
2 litres	5 drops	10 drops
4 litres	1/8 teaspoon	1/4 teaspoon
20 litres	1/2 teaspoon	1 teaspoon
40 litres	1 teaspoon	2 teaspoons

Where's the water?

Recently we asked residents in Ascot Park, Aotea, Waitangirua and parts of Cannons Creek and Whitby to go easy on water use for a few days, or risk running out.

And here's why!

Stemhead Lane reservoir which usually supplies water to those areas is currently empty, as it is undergoing earthquake strengthening.  A bit of an inconvenience now to help prevent a major inconvenience in an earthquake.

Ascot Park reservoir is now feeding the suburbs normally serviced by the Stemhead Lane reservoir, as well as its usual area.  Initially, the demand on water from that reservoir meant that it was emptying faster than Greater Wellington Regional Council's bulk water network could refill it, so some areas may have experienced a drop in pressure, or loss of water. 

Some of this problem has been relieved by reducing the bulk supply to the other cities slightly, and feeding that extra into Porirua's network, but please continue to reduce your usage during the peak use times of 5pm-8pm and 6am-9am to help maintain the supply.

Work on the reservoir is scheduled to be completed in about a fortnight, so normal service should resume then.

Go easy on the water!

Residents in Ascot Park, Aotea, Waitangirua and parts of Cannons Creek and Whitby are being asked to go easy on water use for the next couple of days, or risk running out.

Work to earthquake-prrof Porirua's main reservoir in Stemhead Lane, means that Ascot Park reservoir is temporarily providfing water for the two catchments.  Greater Wellington Regional Council has not been able to supply water quickly enought to keep up with the current demand on the Ascot Park reservoir.

Households in these areas need to be sparing of their water use as water pressure is already dropping.

Try not to use large quantities of water during the peak use times of 5pm-8pm and 6am-9am to avoid a loss of water.

The council is working to restore the supply at Stemhead Lane and hopes to have this up and running by the weekend.

Dalight Savings ends this weekend

It's that time of year again.


This Sunday we all put our clocks back one hour. Remember "Spring forward, Fall back".


The Fire Service would like to remind you to change your smoke alarm batteries, or get a couple of smoke alarms if you haven't got any - contact the Fire Service if cost is going to be a problem.


And while you are thinking about keeping your family safe, it's a good time to check your emergency supplies.

Check that you can find all of your survival items, and make sure that they work. You don't need to keep them all in a special kit, I've got mine all over the house!

Check that your household plan is up to date, and everyone knows what to do. Has anyone on your emergency contacts list changed phone numbers, or moved house?

Check that your long-life food hasn't gone past its expiry date. Have a look for swelling, dents or rust on tins, as they are signs that the contents may not be good anymore. I write the date I bought canned food on the top, so I know to use the oldest tins first.

Have a look at your emergency water supply. If it's gone a bit green or has floaties, give the bottle a good clean out, and refill or replace it, and store a few more for good measure. You can never have too much. Don't forget you can pick up 10L water containers from the council office, for just $5 each.

Storing water - now would be a good time

The water that comes from your tap in Porirua has a remarkably long journey. It comes all the way from the Stuart Macaskill storage lakes at Te Marua, north of Upper Hutt, where the water was collected from the river. It's treated to make it clean and safe, and then heads down the valley (across the Wellington Fault in a couple of places) to a pumping station at Haywards, where it is pushed up and over the hill to flow on down to Porirua's reservoirs.

Currently, one of those storage lakes is completely empty. Greater Wellington is upgrading the sourthern lake this summer, to improve its strength in an earthquake, and also increase its capacity. The northern lake will be emptied and upgraded next summer. But in the meantime, it means that we have half the water stored in the system than we usually have.

This is likely to mean water restrictions as summer progresses, but it also means that now is a very good time to have more water stored in your own home for a unfortunate day when nothing comes out of the tap.

The warmer weather means that you'll probably be having lots of cold refreshing drinks - the kind that come in nice 1.5 or 3 litre clear plastic bottles - perfect for storing water! Instead of chucking the empty bottle in the recycling bin, clean it out, fill it to the top from the cold tap until it overflows, pop the lid on, and put it somewhere cool and dark out of your way. Tada! You've got some more water stored!

If the only refreshing drinks you have come in cans, glass, or milk bottles, then you can always buy some of our 10L water containers to store water in. They are just $5 each from the council office in Cobham Court.

Thumbs up to Rangikura School

Oops, forgot to publish this last Monday!

The Emergency Management Office team spent last Friday (18 November) working with the Year 7 & 8(?) kids at Rangikura School.

They were divided into three groups, one for each part of the day, and then each of those groups was divided into three teams of about ten students each. Each team went to a different area to learn about something new for half and hour before moving to the next area. The teams learned about:

• Storing water for emergencies - how much you need, where you could find water, and how the 25,000L rainwater collection tank at their school works, and how to make the water safe for drinking.


• Sanitation - how to make an emergency toilet, and keep clean and healthy during an emergency, and also a bit of basic first aid.


• Making emergency shelters - given a large plastic tarp & some ropes, what kinds of shelters could you make? Floors, walls, sun shades, roof repairs, tents, privacy areas - they were quite creative!

The weather was great (if a little windy), then "nek minnit" a random hail storm came through to give the kids an idea of just how quickly the weather could turn. It certainly gave them a bit of urgency for getting their shelter up!

The kids were awesome, and apparently didn't stop talking about it for quite some time!

If you are interested in having the Emergency Management team come to talk to your school, please get in touch.

Storing water - not just for disasters

Sometimes things just go wrong - it doesn't have to be an earthquake or anything particularly serious, just some old infrastructure finally giving up the ghost, and voila! you have no water for the day.

This is exactly what happened for thousands of Wellington residents in Brooklyn, Mornington & Kingston yesterday. http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/5647128/Wellington-suburbs-lose-water-after-main-bursts

It's great to hear that at least some of them had stored water set aside for just such an event.

Regardless of whether it's for during an emergency, or for when the pipes are bung, you should store at least 3 litres per person in your house per day, and have enough to last three days - so that's at least 9 litres each.

Don't forget, that's just drinking water (you'd be surprised how thirsty you get when you haven't got much to drink), it doesn't include water for cooking, or washing dishes, or getting yourself clean. You should store more water for that if at all possible.

The World Health Organisation has had a fair bit of international experience with disasters and says that 15L of water per person per day is a realistic amount to go through in an emergency. If you're curious, our figures show that you use 350L(!) each per day normally - flushing toilets, doing laundry, having showers & baths, washing the dishes, brushing your teeth, cooking, drinking, and everything else you do with tap water.

Obviously it may be difficult to actually find room to store that amount for water in your house, so just do the best that you can. We've made this a bit easier for you by sourcing some really good 10 litre plastic water containers. They're a bit easier to fit in the closet or under the bed than a dozen Coke bottles, so you can easily make room for two or more for each person in your family.

We've got these bottles for sale at the awesome price of just $5 each from the Porirua City Council offices at 16 Cobham Court.

One year on

One year ago today I had toothache that kept me awake most of the night. One year ago today I sat in the silent, shaking dark with growning panic. One year ago today my cat was hiding under my bed, petrified. One year ago today I actually used my Civil Defence training. With the usual strangeness of time it seems both long ago and far too recent.

- Jennifer Jacobs, Christchurch

4th September 2010 - 4: 35am

For people in Canterbury the earth shifted beneath them, literally, and everything changed.

For some people it was a dry run of what was to come in February, but for others that first shake was enough to tear their lives apart. It was a miracle that no one died in that quake (the timing meant that most people were at home in their beds), but people no longer felt safe in their own homes (some were forced to abandon their houses due to the physical damage), familiar places were broken and no longer familiar, workplaces closed, sometimes forever, livelihoods lost or drastically altered.

What was "normal" became something very different to what you or I would consider to be normal. Moata's blog on Stuff has some brilliant insights on this, and the comments are enlightening, and quite touching. http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/moatas-blog-idle/5554131/Happy-anniversary-baby

Things changed for the rest of the country too. There was a certain degree of "What the..? Christchurch?! But Wellington is supposed to get the Big One..." and then the sudden realisation for many people that, yes, it could happen any where, any time. And we live in Porirua, the Wellington Fault is just over there, why aren't you prepared already?!

Sales of bottled water and water containers around the country sky-rocketed. I know some of our local stores sold out as people actually started to think about their emergency supplies, and stocked up.

The phone on my desk started ringing near-constantly with community-conscious groups asking us to come out and talk to them about preparedness, or individuals asking about the best ways to store water or create an emergency toilet. It's one of the things we're here to do, so keep those calls coming.

Some of our council staff were deployed to Canterbury to help with building inspections and repairs to the sewage, drainage & water networks. We also had staff helping at the National Crisis Management Centre coordinating the national response.

Response agencies around the country stretched their own local resources to send staff & volunteers to ease the burden of those local people who had continued to provide response services to the public, despite being just as affected as those they were helping.

Lessons were learned about things that worked in theory, but weren't so good in practice, proven systems proved themselves yet again. Some of the wrinkles were ironed out of plans which had never been fully tested, and almost everyone had some handy gem of wisdom to pass on to help others get through the next event - which unfortunately came all too soon on February 22nd.

What have you learned from Canterbury's misfortune? Is there some handy tip that friends or family in Canterbury have passed on to you? Have you taken extra steps to prepare your family as as result of the Canterbury earthquakes?

75% prepared

Awesome work, guys!

According to the latest Annual Residents' Survey of 400 Porirua residents, 75% of you have stored food & water and have a household plan for an emergency. The last time the survey was done, we only recorded 56%. What changed your mind?

While I'd love to claim the credit, I know a significant proportion of it to be a direct result of the Canterbury earthquakes. It's sad, but true, that it takes a disaster to spur us into action. I wish it didn't.

There's hardly anyone that I know that doesn't have friends or family in Canterbury, and when it's friends and family telling you the things they've experienced, and what they've had to do to get through, it really makes you realise that it could happen to you too. Especially since the Wellington region was always the place waiting for the Big One - the Canterbury quakes came out of the blue.

Have you changed your attitude towards preparing for emergencies as a result of the Canterbury quakes, or is there something else which made you decide to get ready?

Are you one of those 75% who are prepared? If not, why not?

While we don't want to be having more disasters, if there are other things that have got you thinking and preparing, please let us know!

It’s easy to make a household emergency plan

Latest media release from the Wellington Region...

Recent tragic events in Christchurch should reinforce to all of us the benefits in having a household emergency plan, Wellington Region Civil Defence Emergency Management Chairperson Jenny Rowan said today.

“An effective household emergency plan only takes a few minutes to prepare and can take a lot of stress out of the period that follows a natural disaster or major household emergency,” Jenny Rowan said.

“It’s important that families or flatmates prepare these plans together so that everybody knows what to do and where things like survival items are located.

“The Wellington Region CDEM Group has prepared an award winning 12 step guide booklet called It’s Easy. Copies of these are available for free at all city, district and regional council offices throughout the region and can be downloaded online at www.getprepared.co.nz

“Households should also regularly add emergency items to weekly shopping lists and make sure they have enough water stored to last three days. That helps spread the cost of these across the year and also ensures that items with an expiry date are regularly replaced.

“Being well prepared for an emergency is easy. All that’s needed is a commitment to making a plan,” Jenny Rowan said.

Award-winning guide to preparing for an emergency

I have to say that our public education group in the Wellington Region is awesome!

Here's a media release about some of our work.

Emergency preparedness document wins international award

A guide outlining easy step-by-step instructions for how to prepare for an emergency, published by the Wellington Region Emergency Management Group, has won the International Association of Emergency Managers 2010 Global Public Awareness Award.

The “It’s Easy” booklet was published in June 2010. The initial print run of 37,000 copies has been nearly exhausted.

“We’ve received positive feedback from householders and our local Emergency Management offices about the ‘It’s Easy’ booklet. But we’re really rapt and proud to get international recognition from an organisation with the standing that the International Association of Emergency Managers has,” Wellington Region Emergency Management Group Controller Rian van Schalkwyk says.

“Production of the booklet was a real team effort from the greater Wellington region Civil Defence Emergency Management public education group.

“This group identified a need for a handy, easy to read and understand guide for emergency preparedness and then produced it. They’ve done a tremendous job.

“Natural disasters can strike without warning anywhere at any time. The need for emergency preparation has been spectacularly highlighted recently by the Canterbury earthquake and also by floods in various parts of the country. It’s clear that the more preparation people make for an emergency, the more likely they are to get through it and that’s where the ‘It’s Easy’ booklet can help,” Rian Van Schalkwyk says.

Copies of the award-winning “It’s Easy” booklet are available from Council offices throughout the greater Wellington region and online at http://www.getprepared.co.nz/.

Flooding in the region

While Canterbury keeps shaking in seemingly endless aftershocks, here in the Wellington region we've been dealing with the weather instead - with heavy rain in the Tararuas bring the Hutt River well up - http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4098921/Hutt-River-flood-fears-ease, and also causing flooding in Wairarapa, and in Horowhenua (where a boil water notice has been issued) - http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4098940/Flooding-cuts-road-links. High winds have also been a problem in the past couple of days, with winds gusting to 140kph in the Rimutakas, blowing over an ambulance which was attending to a van than had been blown over by the winds.

Lessons from Chile

The latest issue of "Impact" has been published by the Ministry of Civil Defence & Emergency Management, and it has some good articles in it - especially one on the lessons which can be learned from the impact of the 8.8 quake that struck Chile on 27 Feb, and caused tsunami warnings all around the Pacific. Building codes, infrastructure redundancies & public education and preparedness really do make a difference.

There's also plug for the Wellington Region's new step-by-step preparedness guide - "It's Easy - Get prepared for an emergency", which you can download here (670kb). The others in the public education team and I are pretty chuffed with how it's turned out.

Zap!

Just goes to show that small incidents can create big problems.

A lightning strike hit the Hamiton water treatment plant and has caused all sorts of problems, taking out the computer systems, locking out the workers, and leading to loss of water or pressure in parts of town.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3253498/Lightning-strike-hits-Hamilton-water-supply

Discovering what it's like to be stuck at school

On Thursday last week, a class of 11 & 12-year-old kids from Discovery School in Whitby got a taste of what it would be like to be stuck at school after a major event like an earthquake.

In the week prior I got a few calls from the pupils asking if I could come in and talk to them about emergency stuff during their earthquake simulation day on Friday 11 December. They were going to spend the whole day and overnight at the school living like they would in an emergency. Awesome, I'm in!

However, their teacher, Mr McManaway, had been very sneaky, and gotten to me first. So, in collaboration with the parents, we sprung it all on them a day early! It would hardly be a realistic exercise if the kids have a sleeping bag, a tent, and dinner for four tucked away in their school bag, would it?

10am on the Thursday an earthquake struck while the kids were at phys-ed. The sound system played the realistic rumbles and crashes of an earthquake while the kids dropped, covered and held. Once the aftershocks stopped (the track got stuck on repeat...), we all made our way back to their classroom, and they discovered the wreckage.





Tables upended, bookshelves toppled, possessions strewn across the room, tree branches through the windows, "broken glass" everywhere. Total carnage! It took a good while to get it cleaned up and made liveable again. Because living there was what they were going to have to do - possibly until Saturday morning, which, as far as the kids knew, was when their parents were going to pick them up.



Once they had things tidy, we took stock of the situation. I gave them the run-down on what was expected of the school in such situations, and we all discussed where their parents worked, how long it was likely to take them to get to the school and so on. We had a look at the emergency supplies that were available, and thought about how to ration those. Some kids hadn't had any breakfast, and some had planned to buy lunch so didn't have any food with them at all. There were presentations on emergency food and water, and how to dispose of sewerage in an emergency.

A bit before lunchtime we headed over to the library to discover that the earthquake had affected it as well, and there were injured kids inside who needed their help. I was well impressed by their first aid skills.

I had to head off around lunch time for another meeting, and when I left the kids were still under the impression that they were going to have to use a bucket for a toilet.

I got back shortly after 5pm, and the kids were still being kids, and the teacher was looking slightly frazzled, but nobody had gone cannibal yet. The emergency survival food was dug out for dinner and consumed with varying degrees of enthusiasm. We then sat down to watch the show that screened after Aftershock - the one about the family surviving for three days on their emergency stuff. We thought the kids were probably a bit young to inflict the full movie on them.

The next plan was to sort out all the sleeping arrangements. The kids spent a goodly while building forts and tents out of the available furniture before we decided that, since we had a perfectly intact roof, the curtains would be more use as blankets rather than tents. Some interesting "debates" about group versus individual needs.

The kids had pretty well bedded down for the night by the time I headed off arounf 9:15pm. Their parents were scheduled to pick them up at 10:30, so they could go home to their real beds, and be vaguely functional human beings for school the next day.

A really interesting day!

Kapi-Mana News articles

A couple of articles about us in today's edition of the Kapi-Mana News - and conveniently replicated online!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/kapi-mana-news/3067822/Water-tanks-to-the-rescue

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/local/kapi-mana-news/3067861/Exercise-Phoenix-tests-staff

Disaster Awareness Week 2009

Just in case you weren't aware enough - it's Disaster Awareness Week!

Disaster Awareness Week runs nationally to coincide with the International Disaster Reduction Day on the second Wednesday of October - this Wednesday, 14 October.

You may have heard the ads on the radio already - Wherever you are right now, are you ready?
There are also ads showing on TV.

After the past few weeks' events, I reckon the residents of Porirua are much more aware than they used to be, but to help push the message home, we're working with Porirua New World (who you'll be very pleased to know contacted us during the tsunami alert on the 30th of September to see if they needed to put their Civil Defence plan into action) with a display table of important information, and survival items around the store will be highlighted. We'll also be giving away eco-shopping bags - they have a checklist on them of some of the things you should have for your survival kit - a good reminder when you're out doing the shopping.

If you are after containers to store emergency water in, you can stop by at our main council reception desk in Cobham Court. The big yellow containers are $15 each and hold 15 litres of water - they're a bit easier to stack than old fizzy & juice bottles - takes up less room in the cupboard.

Storms around the world

A tropical storm has flooded one of India's biggest cities, killing at least 10 people. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4774041a12.html

And flooding & landslides in Brazil have killed 84 people so far. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4773621a12.html. One of the major issues in the affected areas of Brazil is lack of drinking water. How much have you got squirrelled away?

You need at least 3 litres per person per day, just for surviving. More if you plan on washing your hands etc. The latest statistics on our water usage in the Wellington region shows that we use 400 litres per day! That's not so much usage as wastage... You should probably thinking about storing more than the minimum .