Reports of cholera outbreaks now in Puerto Rico...

[Hortensis]

62. A lesson to all of us. Everyone taking it, hopefully? A LifeStraw, just for instance,

may last a single person over a year and costs about $15. It's not a complete defense but a miracle compared to nothing. We have one in each vehicle.

In the house on a basement shelf a couple bottles of bleach (at 6-8 drdops/gallon they'd serve the whole neighborhood) and a few clear plastic and glass bottles, saved instead of tossing, for using the sun's rays to disinfect water (soldis technique).

We also have a couple weeks plus of bottled water for the two of us (six 5-gallon bottles and a dozen or so quarts) because we're getting along and hauling heavy water a few hundred yards up a steep hill from a nearby lake would get old almost as fast as standing in line in the sun in San Juan, and then hauling it home. (In addition to a cranky old generator for our well.)

We're in a rural area, no expectation of FEMA out here of course, but at least we do have a a lake. Those without a water supply within carry distance need to find more places to store bottles. Crawl spaces, normally unused anyway, would be great. Btw, those cheap gallons from the market tend to leak after a while.

Btw, people who think they'd have warning, or no crawl space, could purchase large (up to like 100 gallon) water storage "bladders" for very little that would take up very little room until they were used (such as in a bathtub or outside at the bottom of a downspout), but I just checked Amazon and several sellers are out. Purchase ahead of need.