Slam Dunk

Aloha, 

Welcome back!

Pete the Plumber has mentioned more than once in this Pipe space a universal understanding: No one likes a “I told you so”. But the 2024 hurricane Helene effects in the American South, expressly in Asheville, North Carolina, underscores an upstream blog: “Some Straight Poop: “The Cruelest Inconvenience and Power To The Peeple”. What the author there attempted was to get readers to visualize having to live for an extended time without toilets flushing. Perhaps due to the ‘shake prone’ bailiwick of yours truly the author when writing that blog visualized an 8.9 ‘shaker’ physically breaking some large municipality’s sewerage and wastewater/sewage treatment infrastructure to the point that it was no longer capable of handling its former demands. The Helene tragedy rudely brought this question to the fore.

What is an urbanized (“water/sewer/power”) privileged population going to do about having  to deal with their own poop? for a possible extended period of time?  What happened in Asheville, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene was a wake-up call for the author: ‘to hell with just earthquakes’; hurricanes can also interrupt a population’s most taken for granted but highest priority privilege.

*As the author is writing this a big quake (somewhere) has started shaking the s’’t out of his abode. (Oh please, don’t whack the commode!!!!)  (When this Pipe is completed Pete will follow-up with the specifics.)
 
Bucket Brigade

Now, one survivor of the recent hurricane Helene, near Asheville, had to walk to a near-by creek with buckets and trudge them home to flush his family’s toilets. (Admire/feel sorry for him?). This guy was one of the lucky ones. His house was still left intact and he had an accessible, free source of toilet flush water when most everyone’s water supply was halted. Hurricanes, we’ve long witnessed, knock-out electrical supply to ‘zillions’. It’s not just refrigerators, lights and tv’s here. That power is needed for pumps (and other demands) at municipal fresh water treatment and wastewater/sewage treatment facilities, too. ‘No power—no water flow for treating your poop.’ (Unfortunately most of the U.S. still uses prized fresh water for this service.) Folks served by septic shouldn’t feel too smug. Though earthquakes can physically break piping infrastructure but leave the power supply intact, hurricanes (as we well know) often leave a populace without power. Regardless, if your abodes sanitary plumbing is served via septic or municipally, like the lucky/unlucky guy above, with no power to energize well pumps (and supply your toilet with flush water) you’ll be lucky if you are as fortunate as our friend in Asheville trudging to the creek with buckets.
 
Slam Dunk

 A mouthful: Pete the Plumber recently read an article that immediately struck me as the most lucid explanation for a layperson’s best hope to manage their own (and others?) poop (and urine) disposal in the event of a cataclysmic event that hobbles water supply and sanitary waste treatment and disposal (regardless of cause). In an article Appearing in a 2021 Oregon State University Extension Service Catalog (title below) authors Lauren Kramer, Glenda Hyde and Lynette Black discuss the possibilities of a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake (their bailiwick). The hypothetical shaker causes heavy damage to water supply, water treatment and sewer systems, rendering them unusable “…for weeks, months or for some communities --years.” (bolding mine). Whoa! Very scary. (Especially for plumbers, who realize they’d be worked to death.)  (H1-B visas would flow like the water we won’t have. (Polish plumbers?).
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In the three author’s wonderfully written, profusely illustrated, easy to understand ‘voice’, even the ‘inapt’ among us are shown an effective sanitary processing method stressing the use of two, common, 5 gal. plastic buckets in conjunction with some commonly available cellulose. It’s that simple and it works. If the reader resides in a ‘risky’ (natural disaster wise) location they’d be very wise to read “Survival Basics: Sanitation and Waste Management/OSU Extension Service Twin-bucket system is the Way to Go When Disaster Strikes.”
 
Survival Basics: Sanitation and Waste Management
https://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pub/em9334-s
 
A natural disaster such as a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake poses a danger of magnitude (Seattle will become an island of rubble) to sanitation treatment facilities and ‘in the ground’ sanitation infrastructure from hurricanes. But, knowing and preparing yourself for the time when installed sanitation systems are not functioning (regardless of cause) OSU’s “SURVIVAL BASICS” has your back be it shakers or storms. “It’s a Slam Dunk! 
 
Unsung Heroes
Before the bell rings setting you free, and because the subject at hand has been poop, Pete the Plumber wants to do a shout-out to some unsung heroes of advanced societies, worldwide.

We privileged individuals the world over living with convenient sanitation infrastructure ne’r give a thought to what happens to our previous meals as we do (or don’t) gratefully watch them take leave of our toilet for someone else to deal with. For those living on septic, their (poop) “after-life” is spent right on the property!  Now, what about those of us living in communities served by municipal sanitation infrastructure?  We the luckier ones send our former meals on an ‘off the property’ journey, to be dealt with by others.

The men and women who operate municipal water (fresh), wastewater, and sewage treatment facilities (for the benefit of us) during and after storm disasters are no less the heroes than firefighters when responding to natural (and sometimes otherwise) disasters. In the author’s bailiwick it’s forest fires. Along local roads “THANK YOU FIREFIGHTERS” signs are common.

​However, the enemies to human health in untreated water and untreated human waste need not a ‘season’ to wreak their damage. This presents a continuous challenge to the ‘invisible’ operators of municipal treatment plants. In times of national emergencies such as hurricanes their challenges multiply. The public rarely has an inkling of a system’s ‘instabilities’ until the system is overcome and fails. All the human ‘might’ thrown at maintaining uninterrupted operation is not celebrated with heartfelt “THANK YOU signs, roadside, for them. Do you think that maybe we could start to change that? with perhaps a commemorative Postage Stamp ? 
 
 Big Shaker

The earthquake that decided to distract the author when he was beginning this Pipe turned out to be a 7.0’er that centered roughly a hundred and fifty miles away, 40 some miles offshore in the Pacific Ocean. Because of the distance from Pete’s present bailiwick it wasn’t as bad as the 1989 Loma Prieta 7.1’er that broke the toilet that Pete the Plumber happened to be sitting on (no injuries) mere miles away at the time. But this new one, off the Humboldt County Coast was big enough to revive that memory. Those of us that live in ‘seismic land’, long enough, tend to become indifferent to the non-stop “mini” shakes, until a ‘muscular’ intruder wakes us up. Those readers living in ‘hurricane country’ are luckier: trouble can be plotted on a calendar. Either way, our biggest inconvenience is ‘waiting in the wings’. Will you be prepared? It’s a Slam Dunk!
 
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Until Next Time
PtP