Planning for Emergency Drinking Water Supply
32
and local resources for addressing the potential needs. This might include evaluating military resources
and National Guard resources and mobilization times. It should also include private sector/vendor
capacity as either a supplementary element of the strategy or as part of a contingency plan.
18
Finding VII - Highlight the need for personal preparedness of citizens, including the need for a
three-to-five day supply of potable water.
While it is well understood in emergency management field that there will be time lag between the need
for potable water and the mobilization of resources to meet this need, major portions of the public are,
apparently, poorly equipped to be self-sustaining. Therefore, current efforts to educate the public (e.g.,
www.ready.gov and www.prepare.gov) should be increased to encourage personal preparedness. In
particular, there is a need to increase clarity about expected duration of outages and the amounts of water
that individuals should maintain (e.g., 1 gallon per person per day). Consideration should be given to a
strategy that leverages private industry for public service announcements and advertising to elevate this
message. The Consumer Confidence Report (annual water quality reports provided to consumers
pursuant to the Consumer Confidence Report Rule, 63 Fed. Reg. 44511 (Aug. 19, 1998), published at 40
C.F.R. Part 141 Subpart O)
may be a useful vehicle for targeted communication on the need for personal
preparedness.
Finding VIII - Develop strategies to improve the efficiency of providing an emergency water supply.
Conduct Timeline Analysis – In order to determine what items would benefit from strategy refinement, it
would be useful to conduct a timeline analysis on the provision of potable water. The analysis should
include various sources (e.g., local, commercial, Corps), amounts required, transportation to potentially
affected areas for the affected population, and duration of maximum credible events. It should also
include the time from the event to assessment of damages, requests for assistance, locating existing
resources, obtaining approvals, transportation issues, mobilization of production lines for additional
equipment, site set-up, security, staffing, monitoring, etc.
Foster Innovative Responses – Assess plausible innovative response strategies that can be considered for
further development and application in major disaster scenarios (see Appendix B).
• The feasibility of the provision of emergency water supplies using bottled water should be
evaluated in terms of procurement, supply, capacity, transport, and distribution to individuals.
• Alternative drinking water strategies should be considered in settings where there is significant
risk that an imported bottled water strategy would be insufficient.
For example, in some less-
developed countries, approaches have included household treatment, disseminated treatment,
developing temporary distribution systems, or even re-location of people for greater proximity to
water and shelter (WHO 2002).
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Relevant federal grant programs could be used to stimulate
innovation along these lines (e.g., scaling up mobile package treatment units, decentralized
treatment strategies, provisional distribution systems).
• Supplementing bottled water with containerized units for bulk water production should be
examined as a strategy. Note that the largest units currently available have maximum unit
capacity of 1 million gallon per day and little inventory of such containerized units currently
exists.
18
Recent analysis of the consequence of a Sacramento levee failure indicated that up to 25 million people could be
out of drinking water. This would require 4,000 tractor trailer loads of bottled water per day for over 6 months.
This is not likely a sustainable strategy (Source: USACE/FEMA 2010 Senior Leadership Seminar.)
19
WHO 2002. See discussion on p. 95.