I worked nights last week, and then I worked the weekend. Saturday morning, when I drove to work between 2 and 3am, I noticed there were way more cars on the road than usual. I stopped at Tim Horton’s for a delicious ice capp and was on my way. When I got to work and was chillin’ before I needed to start pharmacisting, I saw some tweets that the water was not safe to drink or touch. At that point, the news sites all said, “Do not drink, do not boil, do not touch” the water. WTF! I drink a ton of water and also rather enjoy washing myself and things, so I was like OMG, it’s 3am, and I can’t leave work and get water and also, WTF. Panic panic rabble rabble.
My tech last weekend, the Cabbage Patch, draws the doses and then goes up to Ann Arbor around 4:30am. So I told the Cabbage Patch, “Here’s some money, when you’re up into Michigan, buy me a case of water, and if you’re smart, you’ll buy yourself some, too.” Another driver comes in at 5 and goes to Findlay. When he got there, I stopped him from drinking the water/making coffee/etc., and he’s 200 years old, so he was all concerned about having taken his pills with water before he came in to work, showering, etc. He called me from Findlay and asked if Cabbage Patch was back and if he had been able to get me some water. He offered to get me a case, and I said sure…I don’t mind if I have two, certainly. So two minutes later, Cabbage Patch called and said he was at the Central Ave. Meijer and they have no water. DUH. DUH. I said, “That’s why I told you to go when you were up in Michigan…” And his answer was, “I was on the clock, I didn’t want to go looking for grocery stores.” My answer was, “Um, you’re still on the clock…?”
Then, once everyone was back at the pharmacy and we were all reading about the water situation, Bossman called from a Magical Voyage for Water that included such exotic locales as Bowling Green, Rising Sun, and Fostoria. He asked if I needed water, because after a few stops where stores were already sold out, he had found a lot of water at the Fostoria K-Mart. He was very concerned with getting bigger jugs, since the news still said not to touch the water. He also suggested that we should call Brian’s parents and have them buy several cases of water JUST IN CASE.
Not long after the Magical Voyage for Water had finally hit pay dirt (between 9 and 10AM), the Department of Public Utilities updated everything to say that the water was safe to wash with, but still, “Do not drink, do not boil.” The level of microcystins in the water was 2-3 times the drinking limit (1ppb) and much less than the skin contact limit (20ppb). When I got home from work, we watched a ton of local news, which, spoiler, was amazingly bad, and then Bossman delivered our water from Fostoria K-Mart. It *was* really nice to have some jugs of water to fill cat water sources with.
The news focused on when the results from samples sent to EPA/Ohio EPA/other labs would come back, and the time to expect results seemed to roll forward all weekend. They also did a lot of reporting about where you could get water, as well as giving contradictory information about whether secondary water tasks were ok (CAN I WASH MY CLOTHES?!? CAN I WASH MY DISHES?!?! CAN I WATER VEGETABLES??!). The drinking ban stayed in place until Monday morning. It was a crazy, crazy time, but I have to say that, at least from my (relatively) calm perspective (and as someone who is able and would rather pay $2.99 for a case of water than wait at the free distribution sites) that the response from the local/state government was great. If you needed water, several schools were distribution sites giving out cases/bottles/bags of water, aided by volunteers, National Guard, police, whoever. Fire stations and even just random people in places with OK water were letting people come fill jugs and other containers with water. This is a thing: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/04/toledo-the-town-too-tough-for-water.html
Sunday morning after work, I went to Kroger (which, side note, 10:30 Sunday AM is usually a dead time at Kroger, but that place was HOPPIN’), and they had replenished their water supply (as did most stores…they reallocated water from other parts of the state to Toledo stores really quickly), and I ended up buying yet another case of water because THERE IT WAS! IT WOULD BE STUPID NOT TO BUY SOME! Anyway, when I was going home, I went home down McCord, and at first I couldn’t figure out why traffic was so crazy, then I realized that Springfield was one of those distribution sites. Two lanes in either direction backed up as far as the eye can see to get a free case of water, soldiers and cops everywhere – I have never seen anything like it. (HELLO EVERYONE: KROGER HAS WATER, NO WAITING).
Anyway, we all got to go to normal work Monday morning and talk about our crazy weekend of water weirdness (and contemplate how much nicer Bear is than me, since he brought in bottled water, a coffee maker, jugs of water for making coffee, etc. for night shift, and all I did was bring water bottles with my initials on them). After that, the water ban was lifted, and we switched into, “I’m still going to drink bottled water for a while, just in case” mode (also, everyone has a shit ton of bottled water…)
So I can say I survived the (first?) #emptyglasscity. I learned a lot. First, the cats get very sad about all their favorite sources of water being shut down. They have bowls, but because we have a cat with bad kidneys, we have many other enticing sources of water to encourage him to drink…2 cat drinking fountains, plus I generally will turn the bathtub faucet on at a trickle whenever they ask (Also, Harvard likes to drink out of the toilet, so we had to remember to close the lids all weekend). They are spoiled. Here is a sad cat, which is what we had all weekend:
Secondly, did you SEE the pictures of the algae near the water intake? GROSS. It looked like a grody smoothie a hippie-dippie Californian would drink. It’s nice that Lake Erie can grow things (as opposed to just catching fire, or whatever), but let’s figure this shit out. Various causes given by the babbling newscasters included that big factory farms put manure on unthawed fields this spring and the runoff was crazy, increasing lake temperatures, other over-fertilization, PHOSPHORUS! Let’s have some nerds solve this and do what they say, ok, cool.
Third, I really want to know how water treatment works. How do they even get all the algae/green out, let alone mostly get all the other bad stuff out. Working in parts per billion is crazy.
Lastly, for now, WHAT WAS I DOING without a stash of bottled water?? Actually, that’s not true, we had part of a case of water, because we needed to take our own beverages to Brian’s relatives’ cookout a couple of weeks ago. Otherwise, we would have had none to start the aquapacolypse. I drink tap water pretty exclusively, as I try not to buy bottles to be a pal to the Earth, but I need to be a little bit more of a doomsday prepper for sure. You don’t realize where all you use water until every thing you do is a question mark. Cooking, washing dishes, washing produce (the stores all had to throw out any produce that might have been washed or misted with microcystin water), washing clothes, washing your hands, watering your flowers, watering your food crops, filling your bird bath, etc. There was some debate about whether flushing the lines was necessary. First they said, if you’ve been using your water at all all weekend, then you’re fine, then they decided to cover their asses and say you needed to flush the hot water heater and WHAT ABOUT THE ICE MAKERS!? What about the ice makers? They’re like dark magic – when was the water from? How much flushing can I possibly need to do? I don’t even know.
Also interestingly, we got this notice a few days before #emptyglasscity, and they say that one of the things they do to counter the algae is use more chlorine:
The water thing has really been the talk of the town all week, so I don’t have much to add, other than that I’m excited that I saw a monarch butterfly on my butterfly bush yesterday, not it’s batesian mimicry imposter the viceroy:
