Several Broken Water Mains in Town Proper

In town proper, the person in charge of monitoring the water company’s tanks received an alert that both of the towers were nearly empty. The computer alert is only one part of the system, though; the tanks also have floats that somebody with the water company can go observe.

You would think, then, that a “Your tanks are nearly empty!” alert from the computer would be simple to confirm. If you were in charge, you’d probably radio or call one of the employees in the trucks all over the town and ask him or her to drop by and check the floats, right? That’s simple and sensible confirmation of what the computer told you was wrong, so why not?

The idiot in charge decided, instead, to blame the alert on a computer glitch. Instead of confirming that there was really a problem, he called tech support; the agent told him that somebody would be out the next day. In the meantime, this dolt sat on his hands, ignoring the alert because it couldn’t possibly be legit.

As it turns out, the tanks supplying the entire stinkin’ town with water really were almost empty when the water company’s employee failed to do anything useful. By the time the computer tech came out and told him that there was no computer glitch, they were almost bone dry. Shortly afterward, citizens started calling in to report that they didn’t have any water coming out of their magical faucets or garden hoses.

The fix – getting more water into the tanks – went well enough. The problem, though, is that the water lines running all over the town are old and crappy. When the water started running through these pipes again, several mains broke.

Yes. Several. As in, roughly seven.

All this happened yesterday or the day before; the water company swears that people in town proper will have water again by Monday. In the meantime, they don’t have water to bathe, flush their toilets, drink, do dishes, or fill their inflatable swimming pools.

Do you trust everyone at your water company to always do the sensible thing? Do you have complete and utter faith in the invisible-to-you pipes and other equipment? Do you believe that any necessary repairs will be completed before you even start to smell bad, especially in a heat wave like we just got past?

If not, now’s as good a time as any to make sure that you have plenty of potable and non-potable water stored away. The people in town didn’t have much, if any, warning that they were going to lose water, so that’s an excellent example of why preparing in advance is a good idea.

A few barrels of water in the basement…some five-gallon jugs of drinking water…a rain-collection system…one-gallon jugs…there are lots of ways to put back water so that, when something happens, you won’t suffer too much.