Welcome back!

As a municipal employee or business owner, there may come a time when you are called upon to help coordinate emergency recovery efforts in the wake of a natural or manmade crisis. At that time, one of the most critical undertakings will be to educate the populace in ways to create a healthy drinking water supply. Although people have been advised that they should have a supply of bottled water for emergency situations, many will not have done it. It may be up to you to help them develop safe water which has no contaminants by using some variety of emergency water filter.

In order to be prepared to help others, you must first understand some simple procedures to use to filter contaminated water for general use. Ideally, people can boil their water. Boiling destroys bacteria and other organisms that can cause illness. After boiling, water can be strained through a clean cloth or coffee filter, both of which make great emergency water filters that will eradicate debris. However, if there is a massive power outage, boiling water may not be possible.

Cleaning water without boiling it can be more difficult. To do so people must combine both settling and filtering. If water looks murky and has a weird color, these methods can reduce the contaminants it contains to safe levels. Allowing water to sit while heavier particles settle to the bottom is a good way to get rid of the larger contaminants. Follow this settling process up by straining the water through an emergency water filter made out of a clean cloth tied to the top of a large container. The water may have to be filtered more than once and then allowed to settle once again before being clear enough to ingest.

Another safeguard can be treating the water that has been process through a portable water purification system with chemicals in a way that will disinfect it further. Using 8 drops of household bleach (unscented if possible) per gallon of filtered water, mix well and allow the mixture to sit for at least a half hour prior to use. If the water seems flat as a result of all of this processing, it can be poured from container to container a number of times in order to aerate it again.