Brangdon, we didn't actually use up all our stored water. The issue was that since we didn't know where we were going to get more from for the first 4 days, I was trying to keep a tight rein on how much we went through. After 4 days there was a water tanker in our part of town, and I think after 5 days we had very low pressure mains water (both sources have to be boiled). After 6 days there was a supermarket open that we could get to on foot.

I store 3 liters of water per person for 3 days. Usually there are 3 people in the household, plus currently 11 chickens, 3 chicks, and 1 cat. So we have around 27 liters of water stored, probably more like 30 as the bottles are not all the same size. Plus 4 or 5 liters of fruit juice and a couple of liters of long life milk in cartons.

We used the water for drinking, and for making hot drinks. I think everyone was suffering from mild shock the first day or so, and being able to have something hot is very comforting. We also keep water with disinfectant in a bowl which is used for handwashing. It gets changed every couple of days. We use hand sanitiser as well, but if your hands are actually dirty you need to be able to get the dirt off before you sanitise them. Due to soil liquefaction sewage contamintated silt is blowing everywhere and gets into everything.

Once we could go refill bottles at the tanker, we started using water for occasional dish washing, hand washing a few clothes and a little for cooking (washing vegetables from the garden, and in a steamer).

It was the chickens that I'd failed to plan adequately for - I have a bunch of young ones that I was raising to sell, so there are several separate pens. Anyone who has ever kept chickens will know it is pretty difficult to find a way to provide them with water that they don't manage to foul (I swear some of them just like washing their feet or something) I've tried numerous purpose made water dispensers and in the end I just gave up and use open containers that are changed every day. I was relying on a small rain barrel to provide extra water for them, but I hadn't checked it recently. It turned out that the tap was slowly leaking, so there wasn't much water for them. I did collect a bucketful of rain water one day when it rained so that helped.

So, we certainly haven't seen the last of the quakes (a shallow 4.8 jolt just last night). The seismologists say that even when things have settled down, we can still expect one in the 4-5 magnitude range every month on average for at least a year.

I will continue to make additional preparations as finances permit, but I've held off on installing rain barrels on the house as the place already needed repairs from damage in the September quake, and now more extensive repairs will be needed as the foundations are damaged. Due to the enormous number of claimants, the public insurance scheme that covers us for earthquake damage moves exceedingly slowly.