A Drill

Yesterday when we awoke, we discovered that our water was yellow. Perplexed, I called my neighbor, Molly to see if hers was yellow, too. “Yeah”, she says, “I just did a load of laundry and the water was brown. If you turn on the TV you’ll see there was a major water main break on River Road (in Bethesda).” Oh right, the TV. It rarely serves as my source for news these days. We soon found that all of the major local news stations were showing River Road was living up to its name. 150,000 gallons of water were pouring out of a major water pipe every minute. About a dozen cars had been driving along the road when the break happened; the tremendous flood flushed them back down the road crashing into each other. Helicopters came and rescued the stranded, uninjured passengers.

People throughout the county were impacted by the break. County schools closed 2 hours early and people on the opposite side of the county reported decreased water pressure at home.

Our immediate concern at home was if and when our water would be suitable for drinking and would we lose water while the repairs on the water main break were done. Being practicing Mormons, we hear a lot about preparedness. Preparedness for personal catastrophe (loss or decrease in income) and widespread catastrophe (natural disaster, economic downturn, end of the world, etc.) are both stressed often. And given national and world events over just the past five years alone, I believe strongly that it is sound, inspired advice. Our church devotes a lot of resources to aiding its members in being prepared, which I am grateful for.

Wouldn’t this be such a great story if I reported that Brian and I smiled and put our feet up yesterday morning because our large water supply was safely nestled in our basement? That would have been great. But alas our water supply consisted of 4 gallon jugs in our basement that I think may be approximately 8 years old. I’m guessing the water tastes more like plastic than water by now. We used to have a somewhat more extensive water supply, but I used it up in anticipation of us moving, because the movers wouldn’t move it and I wasn’t going to move it. So slightly concerned about the prospect of not having drinking water over perhaps the next week, we went into action. And we learned a few things amid the scurry, particularly about human behavior.

Many people will be superficially helpful, but aren’t really because their number one priority is taking care of themselves. At approximately 9:30am Brian (having taken the day off) headed for the nearest grocery store to stock up on water. He found utter chaos with people loading up their grocery carts with as much bottled water as they could fit. By the time he got there all of the gallon jugs were gone, but he was able to get a handful of liter and half liter bottles. Waiting in line, he happened to strike up a conversation with a woman who had a grocery cart chock full of gallon jugs. She told him that she was pretty sure she saw store clerks unload more gallon jugs elsewhere in the store and that he should go look. By the time Brian got there, all the jugs were gone and so Brian returned to his place in line and mentioned to the woman that they were already gone. “Well, I tried to help you” she replied. That was as far as she was willing to go to help. Her jugs were her jugs.

Unless you have a heart of stone, your own supply is actually a communal supply. As I was helping Brian unload the van of the 30 gallons he picked up, several neighbors were out discussing the break. Some said they had been to the grocery store and it was cleaned out. Seeing us unload our water, some said “we may come by to borrow some if it looks like we won’t have water for awhile.” I asked the sweet, elderly lady across the street if she had enough drinking water on hand. “Oh yes, I have a bottle in the fridge”, which would clearly not be enough to sustain her for a substantial period of time. Our church leaders have often said that our personal supplies will be used to aid others. In other words, amid a great catastrophe, those prepared Mormons won’t be dining well while their neighbor starves. Today’s event was merely a blip on the disaster scale, and already I could see how true that was.

There’s nothing like a disaster to knock some sense into you. After enduring the mobs at the nearby store, at 10:45am Brian called me and said he couldn’t get much there--he was heading out of ground zero to search for more water. Fortunately, he only had to get as far as Silver Spring to find stocked shelves of water. So he loaded up. We now have a somewhat respectable supply in our basement.

We probably would have gotten around to improving our water supply eventually. And two days before Christmas is not the day we would have chosen to do it. But today’s events helped to light a fire under us. And I’m glad. I’ll sleep a little better tonight.