Fish out of water?

This past week (beginning Wednesday) there has been a lot of rain in the Lower Mainland....and wind.

Yep, rain and wind on the Wet Coast. Oh my! Nothing too unusual except there has been a LOT of rain in such a short period of time, causing the turbidity in the water to increase. A LOT. Too much in fact, that on Thursday, coming in to work, the water in the toilet was brown. And no, someone didn't forget to flush. Yeah that was a worry....brown water in a hospital! EEP!

A water advisory was issued that day, advising citizens in the Lower Mainland and places on Vancouver Island to boil water for at least 1 minute before use, and not to use the water for brushing teeth, cooking, or washing vegetables and fruit. Oh my!!

There was so much silt in the water I boiled for use that day, I didn't even use because it was so brown. Turns out when I decided to dump it and boil a new pot, there was a layer of silt settled at the bottom of the pot. YUCK!!

Water advisory indeed.

Boiling water boiling water....

Or for others (and to some extent myself), bottled water was the key item and commodity in need. Apparently there were some fist fights in Richmond and at Vancouver Costo store over water, over the weekend.

Well, I was at Costco on Friday night after work, though we didn't see the fist fight. My husband and I went to the new Costco in Vancouver to check it out and to get water. Not that many people were there on Friday night, but there were no regular bottles of water on sale, only those big giant jugs, and those had just been restocked while we were there. We had some bottled water though so we didn't get any water, but lots of people had those jugs in their carts.

But the weekend continued and the water advisory was still here. We bought 2 big jugs of water from a local Safeway just in case. Who knew how long it would continue, as it continues to rain on the very soggy coast, and it was taking longer than expected for the water to clear (according to the water reservoir officials). And our poor fishy, it was time to change his water and we didn't know what to do. Tap water? Would we give tap water that is unfit for human consumption to a little animal to live in it??? :(

So we used one of our big jugs of water....almost all of it to fill up his big 10 gallon fish tank (big tank for just a single fish). We even got him a heater too, to warm up his home. So now the fishy is all happy. We are coping with the water advisory and not panicking (we're usually prepared with emergency water supply and still have some jugs we can use).

And the water advisory continues....

We don't understand why there is such a big panic over water at this point. Don't people believe in emergency preparedness? And this isn't even that big of an emergency, since it is still safe to boil and use the water! And its no longer brown and silty like it was on Thursday. What's going to happen when there's an earthquake people!!??

It's not like we're a fish out of water or anything.