Not prepared for snow? How about murky water? (Part 2)

Now that I've talked about the snow, I now want to lead you on to another problem most BC people have had to deal with for the past week and is still ongoing. Boil water advisory is still in effect for the Vancouver area and Burnaby as their water is still murky.

The heavy rains we have had plus the harsh winds last week was a result of the Philippine typhoon that happened the week before (See my bro's blog for more details on that typhoon). It caused landslides and two of our major reservoirs were affected. Water in the Vancouver, Burnaby, North Shore and some other areas had to deal with brown smelly water coming out from their taps. As of now, it's getting better, but still not where it has to be yet.

News Link - Boil water and heavy winds in BC

In my area (Richmond), as well as most of Coquitlam did not have the same problem. Ever since the torrential downpours, we hadn't had to deal with murky water. But I still boiled my water just in case. There was never a boil water advisory in our area. The reason was that we get our water from the Coquitlam reservoir. The Capilano reservoir and the other one (I'm not sure of the name), were directly affected by the landslides, since it was near or around the mountains.

I got to see first hand at work, how bad it was that people were scurrying to get all the waters we had on hand in our store. I heard in Costco it was even worse, people were climbing over each other and lining up outside to get good clean water. And the stores were all cleaned up in no time. Many people were angry, flustered, and it even made front page news. Heck, even my sister in Toronto heard about it and I never even mentioned it (I wonder what they have thought over there. *hint* *hint* comments please!). It rivaled the lineups outside to get the new Playstation 3!!!!!!! Some people also camped outside for water.

The panic is less now but we still get cleaned out of bottled water and jugs of water everyday, even though we order a lot of skids to make up for the advisory. Water companies are sure making a lot of money these days. I hope the people in the affected areas have water back to normal very soon. Oh yeah, we also get cleaned out of snow shovels and salt (see below) lately.

For somebody coming out of the Philippines, it actually doesn't seem new to me. We have to deal with this same kind of thing every day over there. No way should you drink from the taps as you can get dysentery. Water is always boiled or filtered before drinking. Of course you can use the water to take a shower and brush your teeth, just that water needs to be filtered or boiled before drinking. Sometimes I cannot understand the panic down here, but it's understandable since we take many things for granted over here.