*is scared*
So I get home this morning from buying groceries, and the kids decide they want macaroni and cheese for lunch, so I naturally fill up a pot with water and cook the pasta, some hot dogs and frozen peas in it. After which we all sit down and eat, as usual.
Then I get a call from my husband, telling me that his office has just been told not to drink or even wash with the water coming out of their taps until further notice. And since his office is only five minutes up the road from our house, it seems like a good chance that we're affected too. "You'd better turn on the radio," he says.
So I turn on the radio, and within a few minutes I get the full story, or at least as much as they've released so far: the local health officer has declared a Water Emergency for the whole city -- some sort of spill, somewhere, though they're not going into details yet -- and yes, none of us is supposed to touch the stuff. Also, if you start to feel ill from drinking the water, you're supposed to go straight to Emergency.
Needless to say, this scared me half to death. What about my kids? What about my baby? I feel okay right now, but -- just what was in this mysterious "spill" and how potentially serious is it that we used the water before we realized the situation? If they're telling people to go to Emergency, it sounds like it could be pretty darn serious.
Also, it seems there was a mad run on the grocery stores as soon as the emergency was declared (ironically, right after I left the grocery store myself) and now there's not a bottle of water to be bought anywhere within city limits. My husband says he's going to another town about an hour away and that he'll try to bring some bottled water back with him tonight -- I hope we can make do until then.
And I pray none of us gets sick.
Then I get a call from my husband, telling me that his office has just been told not to drink or even wash with the water coming out of their taps until further notice. And since his office is only five minutes up the road from our house, it seems like a good chance that we're affected too. "You'd better turn on the radio," he says.
So I turn on the radio, and within a few minutes I get the full story, or at least as much as they've released so far: the local health officer has declared a Water Emergency for the whole city -- some sort of spill, somewhere, though they're not going into details yet -- and yes, none of us is supposed to touch the stuff. Also, if you start to feel ill from drinking the water, you're supposed to go straight to Emergency.
Needless to say, this scared me half to death. What about my kids? What about my baby? I feel okay right now, but -- just what was in this mysterious "spill" and how potentially serious is it that we used the water before we realized the situation? If they're telling people to go to Emergency, it sounds like it could be pretty darn serious.
Also, it seems there was a mad run on the grocery stores as soon as the emergency was declared (ironically, right after I left the grocery store myself) and now there's not a bottle of water to be bought anywhere within city limits. My husband says he's going to another town about an hour away and that he'll try to bring some bottled water back with him tonight -- I hope we can make do until then.
And I pray none of us gets sick.