Why is it always bottled water suddenly gone before a hurricane? Do you know where you can get gallons of the stuff free? Your tap.

rant off

This why people need to stock up at Sam's Club months in advance.

Jeanette Isabelle

I hear that they are expecting plenty of water to come their way. Just not the kind they want.

I hope they are OK.

I agree that tap water is perfectly satisfactory for nearly all purposes. It is what I store. Since the highest and best use of water is the preparation of tea or coffee, contamination is a non-starter.

I too am always baffled by the run on bottled water, although I suppose if you aren't into common sense preparation you may not have any storage containers around. I keep several five and seven gallon water containers full at all times and I could fill quite a few Nalgenes if necessary.

good long term storage containers are not necessarily cheap, but many overlook the option of the water cooler carboys available for delivery or at the box stores... you need to plan ahead...as I get older, moving my 20L Scepter water cans is not as easy as it once was.. same with 6gal gasoline cans... make sure what you choose is transportable

Water is water- a flat of shrink wrapped bottles is heavy, too. Obviously the folks buying water just hours ahead of the storm barrelling down on them didn't plan far ahead. But just a little advanced planning could save a lot of money. Really good five-gallon and seven-gallon Aquatainers are less than $14 at Wally World. Heck, you can buy brand new clean 5 gallon pails with lids for $3 or less. It doesn't look like people are buying bottled water to bug out but to ride it out.

I have people look at me funny when i just drink straight from the tap. Some people don't think tap water is clean or something.

Obviously you don't need bottled water for at home. Anything that can hold water will work.

Personnaly i hate disposable things, but i do keep a few waterbottles in the back of my car.

I guess many people are not aware that a lot of the bottled water is just tap water filled into bottles and sold for a fairly high price. I carry Nalgene bottles filled with tap water in my backpack.
A few kilometers from my home there is a bottling plant. Their water is - to some people - much tastier than our tap water. That is kind of surprising as it is the same water.
Apart from that tap water has more and stricter regulations to follow than bottled water. So it could be expected to be at least as clean if not cleaner than bottled water.

I didn't see any rush of people buying hurricane supplies yesterday in south Louisiana. I do expect more people to be out today. Lowe's already has gensets set up on their floor space. There battery display had very little taken, virtually untouched.

Now the forecasts for this area is for Tropical Depression winds (gusting 40-50 mph) and that will still mean a lot of rainfall.

We're ready to bug out but it remains to be seen if we'll need to bugout.