Water warning

[davidn]

A water warning was sent out yesterday for most of the Boston area - a giant pipe burst somewhere and people are rushing to fix it against torrents of water. While the clean water is spilling out all over the place, they do have a backup supply, but it would seem that the nearest one they could find was at the local toxic waste dump:

Take care during flushing pipes not to come into contact with the water. If contact is made, immediately use bottled water to wash the contacted area. Obtain medical help if you are experiencing symptoms.

As all you have to do to get Bostonians to panic is to show them a flashing LED board, they've gone absolutely crazy over this - the bottled water shelves in the supermarket are completely empty, and I saw that there wasn't a lot of medicine left either. Being able to use tap water is something that you really take for granted - even though I know they've said it's safe to use for anything if it's boiled, it's made me realize (and rethink) what trust we place in what's coming out of the taps. I'm boiling a large pot of water now to wash the pile of dishes still left in the sink.

Comments

[igorium.livejournal.com]

Just curious, does it infect people or burn their skin or what are the symptoms?
Could be a beginning of a horror film.

[davidn]

Well, at the moment, nobody knows - it's just a precaution to stop people getting ill from the untreated water. If hideous mutations occur, I'll tell people :)

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

How have they been spreading the word, exactly? Do they just hope people are watching a local TV station? Or do they autodial homes?

[davidn]

I found out through Whitney, because of it propagating through Facebook. It was at least a couple of hours later that we got the telephone call broadcast to homes... I often wonder how the world functioned before the Internet, even though I was alive at the time.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

"I often wonder how the world functioned before the Internet, even though I was alive at the time."

.. that is EXACTLY how I feel. I can't understand how I ever found *any* building without GPS.