Are you prepared for a drinking water crisis?
It was last Saturday at 06:20 in the morning when my phone received a text from the water company Vitens. It stated that the drinking water was contaminated, and 125.000 connections in the city of Utrecht and surrounding areas were affected. By the time I read this message hours later, many supermarkets in the city were already running out of bottled water.
Now, it was not a severe contamination. The text and email stated that the bacterium could be rendered harmless by simply boiling the drinking water for 3 minutes. That was the official advice for any water used for drinks, washing vegetables, or brushing teeth. So while this incident was disruptive, it was definitely not a full-on drinking water crisis! Places like hospitals were able to take measures to continue providing clean drinking water. Office worker productivity had a brief dip as coffee machines were temporarily unplugged.
The other thing Vitens explicitly mentioned in their communication was to not go hamsteren (hoarding) bottled water from the supermarkets, so that those would be available for people unable to boil water at home. Unsurprisingly, this advice was not followed by everyone. I had brief Covid-19 toilet paper flashbacks.
Three days later Vitens was able to confirm that the water was safe to drink again. We ended up mostly boiling the water at home during those days. But when my parents (who we had made dinner plans with) came visiting and brought some bottled water we certainly didn't decline their gift!
It was an interesting time for this incident to happen, as the Dutch government had just started the Denk Vooruit (English link) campaign. This was based on new European Union guidelines for 'these uncertain times', which stated that for any type of disaster or disruption that might happen, people should aim to be self reliant for up to 72 hours.
I'll admit, we had not taken all the recommended steps yet. We have food in the pantry we could eat if there's a disruption in the food supply, or if electricity or gas is unavailable. But we did not stock up on water. In addition, like many people in The Netherlands, we have next to no cash on hand. Which is a risk, if banking or digital payment services would be disrupted. Unlike our neighbours in Germany, most people and stores here prefer digital payments with debit cards, and it's not uncommon to run into places that don't even accept cash.
So our next steps are going to be to have some bottled water and cash stored at home. I hope more people are shocked into action by this incident!