When the Boil Water Notice Hit and a Small Blue Straw Mattered

The notice came at noon on the second day, and it was about water. Freezing rain had knocked the power out the evening before, and by Wednesday the utility district had lost power at the plant as well, so the word came down that anything coming out of the tap needed to be boiled first. I am not a person who works herself up over weather. I drove a mail route for thirty years and I have sat out worse storms than that one in worse places than my own kitchen. But I stood at the sink and did the arithmetic anyway. Two of us, and however many days this was going to run.

We had six gallons of bottled water in the hall closet. We had a two-burner camp stove on the back porch that runs off small propane cylinders. And we had two LifeStraw Personal filters that I had bought the November before, one for me and one for Hollis, sitting on the closet shelf the whole time and never once used. I want to be straight about the order of operations. The filters were not the plan. Boiling was the plan, because that is what the notice asked for, and a pot on the porch stove handled it.

So we boiled. Every pot of water headed for drinking or cooking went out to that stove, and we let it cool, and we drank bottled when we had it. Six gallons went down to about two by Saturday. That is the part I did not expect. Not the storm. The water. Two people, three days, six gallons, and it was thin.

Saturday evening we were down to about two gallons and the notice had not lifted yet. I filled a glass at the kitchen tap, put the LifeStraw in it, and drank it. That was the one time either filter came out of the closet the entire week. Hollis never used his. I am not going to dress that up into something it was not. It was a glass of water. It tasted like water.

But I slept better for having it there, and I have thought about why. A filter is not a plan. It is the floor under the plan. All week the water question kept getting closer to the wall, and knowing there was one more thing on the shelf that needed no power, no battery and no boiling meant the wall was a little further off than it looked.

Two filters in a closet is not a household water supply. It is one person at a time, and I would rather say that plainly than have a neighbor buy one expecting a faucet.

Here is what the thing actually is, because I had to read the listing twice before I understood it. The LifeStraw Personal is a straw you drink through. No power, no battery, no pumping, no tablets. Water goes in the bottom and comes out the top, and a hollow fiber membrane inside stops bacteria, parasites and microplastics down to one micron. The listing puts it at 99.999999 percent of bacteria including E. coli and Salmonella, and 99.999 percent of parasites, and it says one filter is good for up to 4,000 liters. I did not test any of that and I am not going to pretend I did. I am repeating what the listing claims, and I am telling you my one glass was clean and easy.

What it will not do matters more than what it will. It does not remove viruses. It does not remove chemicals, fuel or salt. Floodwater can carry every one of those, and a creek that has been over a road is not the place for a straw like this. I have never drunk creek water through mine and I have no intention of starting. If the notice says boil, boil. That is not me being modest about my own supplies. Boiling was what was asked for and boiling is what we did.

The other limit is arithmetic. One straw is one person drinking. Two of us with two straws is two people drinking one after the other, and that is not a household supply. A family of five would need five of them, and they would still need clean water to pour into the glass. Our two LifeStraw filters live inside the Ready America backpack now, and they have since February, about nine months. Before that they sat on the closet shelf from November to February, roughly three months, doing nothing at all.

The weight is why they ended up in the bag. Each one is 1.62 ounces. That is close to nothing, and it means the filter goes where the bag goes. If we ever have to leave, it leaves with us. If we are home and the water turns strange, it is thirty seconds from the closet to the kitchen. I have never used the LifeStraw on a creek, never used it on floodwater, and never used purification tablets at all. I have only read the labels on those.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy one, and I would tell you in the same breath not to mistake it for a water plan. Buy the LifeStraw because it weighs almost nothing and because the day the notice comes, having it is better than not having it. Then go count your gallons. Six is what we had and six was thin for two people. Read the notice your own utility sends instead of guessing at it, and do what it says. If it says boil, boil. Keep the camp stove out on the porch and the generator outside and away from the windows. When the county tells you to leave, leave. The filter is one small thing in a closet that earns its shelf space once in a while. That one glass on a Saturday evening was the whole test for me, and I am glad it was there. I would not have wanted to lean on it for anything more.