Emergency water backup plans of city governments

Several fellow activists and I have set out to research what our city governments have in place, as far as plans for ensuring availability of 72 hours of potable water for every citizen after a disaster.

So far, we have not been able to find confirmation that any of our local governments has such a plan in place.

A person can only survive without water for 72 hours or less. So it’s important to ensure that there is not disruption in the drinking-water supply. In the wake of a disaster, it very well may not be feasible to bring water in from outside.

Every household can and should have a backup plan in place, but not everyone has the means to do so, at least not easily. In my preferred ways are to keep on hand several days’ worth of drinkable rainwater (in barrels, outside the house), plus several days’ worth of drinkable tapwater (in jugs, inside the house), for each household member. It’s really pretty easy, and doesn’t take up that much space.

On a related note, I recently read that in Tokyo (a city where I lived for five years back in the 90s, and really learned a lot), the municipal govt has set up “disaster parks” in various districts. Residents of each district can gather in the event of disaster and get potable water (stored in underground tanks), cook, charge their phones etc.

The park benches convert into cooking surfaces.

At times of non-disaster, it’s just a pleasant park where people can spend time.

A key component, in my opinion, is that these parks are on a district scale. Not hyper-centralized. It fosters a “district consciousness,” which is very helpful in building the human connection and sense of responsibility/ownership, without which “hard infrastructure” can only go so far.

Here’s the article: https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/tokyo-refuge-parks-survive-earthquakes-fires

“In Tokyo’s “Disaster Parks” Residents Play on Good Days and Cheat Death on Bad Ones

“The parks have buried food, solar chargers and benches that turn into cook stoves.”

CAMERON ALLAN MCKEAN | RESILIENT CITIES   AUGUST 14, 2014

(From NextCity, one of my favorite sources of inspiration for building anti-fragility into our communities.)

Oh no! Left the solar oven running by mistake!

Oh no! I left the solar oven running by mistake! And now …

… Just kidding. And now, absolutely nothing is wrong!

1) Solar oven doesn’t “run”; It’s not plugged in, it’s just ON when you open up the reflectors and position the box to the sun angle.

2) The solar oven cannot catch fire. The temperatures are not high enough to cause combustion, only high enough to slow-cook food.

3) Furthermore, the solar oven is used outdoors. So it doesn’t even heat up the kitchen if you leave it “on” by mistake.

4) The worst thing that’s ever happened when I left the solar oven “on” by mistake, is that nighttime came, and people walking by were confused. They were wondering if I was cooking by the rays of the moon etc. and I had to disappoint them. Nope, it’s just a solar oven, not a lunar oven. But that’s good enough, because there’s plenty of free solar energy available during the daytime! Even in northern latitudes in winter, people can usually use a solar oven for at least a couple hours a day.

PS. There are solar cooking devices that can cause combustion, and cannot be left unattended. If you’re curious, petition the google deities to check out solar parabola, parabolic cooker, etc. Those are great too, but you can’t leave them unattended. Also, with some models, you might have to wear Kevlar mitts!

#UrbanPrepperHomeEc #ZombieApocalypseWatchParty #DoomerBoomer

See this post with photo here on my Facebook page.

Hidden resource: Sweet liquids left over from cooking fruit

(From Afros and Allergies, a content creator I follow on Facebook and highly recommend): “This is the liquid left over from steeping some apples and blackberries in vanilla, sugar, arrowroot powder (like corn starch) and cinnamon for my dessert. It’s kinda syrupy now. Any ideas for how to use it?”

Ooooooh tasty!! 

I often use these kinds of leftover cooking liquids as a mixer for cocktails. Or just dilute it with water or tea or soda, and it’s like a homemade soft drink.

Or, sometimes I pour the liquid around my fruit trees. I figure it helps supply them with extra nutrients.

Little things like this may seem small, and a lot of people would just throw it down the drain without another thought, but they are missing a super treat and passing up what is basically a form of free money!

Visit the comment section of her original post to see some super excellent tips from other people!

#thrift #creativity

PS. Also:

• The juice left over from cooking vegetables is a resource too! All on its own, without having to add anything else, it is a nice nutritious drink, and often it’s very alkaline which is a lot of us are finding is helpful for our health. That veggie-water can also supply nutrients to the garden. Of course, let it cool down before pouring it on the soil around your trees or other plant babies!

• In permaculture design, everything is a resource. Nature doesn’t make trash! What may seem like a waste product is a resource that someone or something else wants or needs. And usually it turns out to our own benefit as well! Money in the bank, as I am fond of pointing out! Not all money is green, made of paper, or issued by a central government. <wink>

Silly Boomer topsheet meme

“Millennials have ditched top sheets, much to the dismay of older generations.” (Accompanied by a photo of a dismayed-looking woman in bed, clutching a top sheet around her shoulders.)

I am so thoroughly confused by posts like this. <laugh emoji> I am a boomer but cannot relate to uptight social norms, excess laundry, or consumerist pearl-clutching.

That said, I personally use a sheet because it allows me to not have to wash the comforter or quilt all the time. So basically I am very lazy, slacking off for mother earth.

Also I live in Florida and use no air conditioning, so a sheet is the only covering I want in summer. And it’s versatile, sometimes I only want it covering my feet — which is perfectly easy to arrange.

A sheet can so quickly and easily be washed/rinsed in a small tub or pot, and then hung on the line to dry.

It doesn’t even have to be washed in water necessarily, sometimes I just hang it up on the line in the morning, and let the sun and wind give it a burst of free cleaning power.

That said, I have no judgment about entire generations deciding to try something new lol.

Generational pearl-clutching seems to have become the new sport of my fellow Boomers with too much time (and money) on their hands.

Maybe a sign that it’s time to find some more hobbies, or get busy planting fruit trees! And definitely we can be watching and learning from the younger generations. There’s a reason why different approaches get popular.

Boring buildings add to eco disaster

From an article in Wired magazine online, “The Global Danger of Boring Buildings“:

“Unloved buildings turn to ruin, leading to a deluge of construction waste worldwide. Designer Thomas Heatherwick tells WIRED why cities need to prioritize human health and joy in architecture. … Buildings need to mean something to people, or they won’t be sustained, they’ll be more likely to be demolished. And in our environmental crisis, the demolition industry is society’s giant dirty secret.”

Synchronicity: Recently I happened to stumble on a series of police novels that I fell in love with. The books are set in Venice, Italy. The main character is a police officer named Commissario Brunetti. (The author of the series is Donna Leon.) Brunetti and the other characters are extremely engaging.

Another thing I really love besides the lovable and admirable characters is the setting itself, Venice. On that ancient island-city, people walk everywhere. (There are no motor vehicles on the island.) And the characters are often shown taking time to admire the beauty of their place — the buildings, the boats, the water — even though most of the characters are Venetian-born and -raised, they never go numb to the beauty of their home. Even when they are in a hurry to get to an appointment, they always have at least a moment to take nourishment from the loveliness of their built environment.

My parents took several trips to Italy, and it was one of their favorite places to go together. One of the things they liked was that the culture seems to have a devout insistence on beauty. Seemingly quite the opposite of the USA, where we seem to have declared beauty optional and impractical.

Interestingly, in the process of putting “practicality” before beauty, we in the USA have ended up creating a lot of impractical buildings and other impractical features in our built environment. It is financially and ecologically unsustainable, particularly as hurricanes and other natural disasters mount in frequency andcseverity. Something to ponder!

Regarding buildings, though, there is a caveat nowadays. With the increasing severity and frequency of storms and other disasters, we might want to encourage more food trucks and other mobile businesses; and portable homes (tiny homes on wheels, etc.). All of which can be very beautiful and lovable too.

#waste #sustainablecities #construction

Climate emergency, or not?

What it really comes down to is, do you or do you not believe that we are in a state of climate emergency?

Not everybody believes that we are. I’m not out here trying to change their minds; that would be like trying to push Niagara Falls back up with a teaspoon.

Rather, I am focused on helping the people who share my opinion that we are in a state of climate emergency. (Or biosperic collapse, or whatever you prefer to call it for shorthand.) I’m focused on helping us get motivated to act in accordance with the level of emergency that we believe is happening.

If we who call ourselves environmentalists believe that there is an emergency, but we keep on with business as usual — jetsetting all over the planet, taking “vacations” to “escape,” when we need to be deepening our bioregional loyalty and nurturing the kind of places we want to live in all the time, that we don’t have to “escape” from; not putting up any fight against the car lifestyle at all; grocery shopping at Big Bulk or Megalo Mart instead of biting the bullet and paying more at the local organic store or open-air farmer’s market for the longterm good of helping to build the resilient & humane food-supply chains; not even trying to open the windows instead of using air conditioning or heat all the time; hoarding houses; habitually accepting plastic bags at the grocery store; keeping our money on Wall Street instead of bringing it local; letting the men we live with say no when we push for native & edible landscaping because “he likes his lawn” (methinks we need to help the Grass Gestapo find a better hobby); thinking it’s OK for us to have big suburban yards but then NIMBYing out all the efforts to develop apartments and townhouses nearby “because traffic” …

— Well, if we keep doing all that, what’s the general public supposed to think? Could they not be excused for doubting that there is actually an emergency going on?

If those of us who assert we’re in a state of planetary emergency are not doing a thing to change our lifestyles. If the so-called environmentalists are leading a lifestyle that is indistinguishable from a “Drill Baby Drill,” Rush Limbaugh with the chainsaw recordings lifestyle.

So that’s what it comes down to. Do you or do you not believe that we are in a state of planetary emergency? Call it climate, call it biospheric, call it whatever — we know what we mean.

And if we believe it, how are we acting on it, right here right now? What changes are we making? What sacrifices?

Sometimes what seems to be a sacrifice has so many hidden benefits that it ends up not feeling like a sacrifice at all. Like just now when I did my grocery shopping and got to visit with so many good local people and partake of a beautiful sunny day unmitigated by a car window, and get a bunch of exercise in the process!! And talk about various possible local business ideas that are incubating together in a bunch of our minds!

How about you, can you think of some change you’ve made that was a sacrifice at first but ended up having so many beneficial side effects that you forgot about the sacrifice part?

Armchair activist …

… is not necessarily the insult it’s meant to be. There’s a heck of a lot we can do from our armchairs! Make phone calls, write letters, read up on our fields, take webinars.

And the letters and phone calls don’t even need to be to the “powers that be” per se. It could be to our Mom or aunt or our sister or a friend. Societies reclaim their sanity from the bottom up, and it starts with person-to-person transmission.

Sharing little tips we’ve discovered that make life easier. Optimizing a household process, finding or making a cool new tool that simplifies a daily chore, etc.

I used to love reading that column in the newspaper called “Hints from Heloise.” They were always just tiny little household tips, but obviously they added up to savings or people wouldn’t have bothered to write or read about them.

(An influential teacher of mine once asserted that societies go insane from the top down. If that’s the case, which I agree that it is, then I think that societies can only reclaim their sanity from the bottom up.)