An Emergency Water Option

Because my husband is in graduate school, we are in a very transient stage of life. We are currently renting a very small home, with no yard. This has put a bit of a cramp in our emergency preparedness style. We've been able to work around most of the challenges, since preparedness is a priority to us. But the one thing that has been extremely difficult for us right now is water storage.

The primary method for storing emergency water is the large, blue 55-gallon drums or barrels which can be purchased almost anywhere, including even WalMart these days. Eventually, we'll invest in the big blue barrels - we also have other ideas we'd like to try. But with renting a home, it makes it a little scary to have huge containers of water sitting around. If they happened to spring a leak, we'd be responsible for the damage. Additionally, with two major moves in the same amount of years, 55-gallon drums are pretty big, and even when they're empty, would take up a lot of our truck space. I don't know that we want to deal with all that just yet. However, water storage is essential to any family's emergency preparedness plan. For now, we have about three week's worth of drinking water stored for our family. This is one area of our plan where I think we're abysmally weak. And it's something I worry about.

In some of my preparedness travels, I came across an item called a Water BOB and I thought it could go a long ways to solving part of our problem. It's a bladder that you can fill up in your bathtub in the event of an impending storm or other problem. This would be perfect in an area prone to hurricanes, or other frequent storms. The major drawback of course, is that in order to successfully use this, you would require some advance warning of a problem. There are so many emergencies that could arise where you wouldn't have that notice. Still, for the many situations where you would have notice, these things would come in handy. Here's a video review I found on YouTube:



I liked this video because it's the whole process from beginning to end. The plastic is food grade, and will hold the drinking water for up to four weeks. I haven't yet been able to find information on how long I can store it (on the shelf) and still have it be pliable (since most plastics become brittle over time) when I eventually pulled it out to use it. I'll update if I can find that info. Even with it's limitations, I think the WaterBob is a worth-while investment for any family's preparedness shelves.