Here it is! Everything you need for your new post-disaster sanitary system. By the end of the Dunbar Earthquake and Emergency Preparedness session, we knew what all this stuff was for.
By Carol Volkart
Got your pee and poo buckets, your heavy-duty garbage bags, your foot pump and pelletized lime?
Nope? Well, me neither, but we’ll be sorry if the Big One hits tomorrow and our loos and sewer systems are buried in rubble.
As Dunbar Earthquake and Emergency Preparedness Society chair Chris Green said in a post-disaster sanitation presentation on March 21, closing our eyes to this essential aspect of a disaster’s aftermath is not clever.
With every person producing about six ounces of feces and two litres of urine daily, it can quickly mount up to a huge problem, especially if the disaster is widespread and basic infrastructure is down for a long time.
“After a major earthquake, we may need to live without running water and working toilets for days, weeks, or possibly months,” Green said. He emphasized that people should expect to deal with sanitation themselves for a couple of weeks or even longer, as it may take a long time for authorities to get better processes in place.
His presentation focused on three elements of post-disaster health – clean water, good hand-washing and safe storage of feces. But in the end, it was mostly about poo.
While urine is generally benign, with few germs, feces are “dangerous to human health in any amount,” Green’s presentation said.
The problem is nasty parasitic and bacterial infections that cause dysentery – a digestive system disorder that can result in diarrhea, fever, vomiting and pain. Extremely contagious, these infections can be deadly for the young, the old, and the immuno-compromised, especially in the crude conditions likely to exist after an earthquake. In fact, said Green, dysentery often kills more people than the original disaster.
The infections are usually spread when poo from an infected person gets into another person’s mouth. This happens through food preparation by someone who doesn’t wash their hands; through contaminated drinking water, or through flies, mice or rats, who first eat poo, then make contact with food or commonly touched surfaces.
Which all leads to Christchurch, New Zealand and the Rube Goldberg contraption Green has set up at the front of the room before the meeting begins.
The Twin Bucket System
The February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, which caused massive damage and killed 185 people, resulted in the development of the sanitation system Green focused on for his presentation.
Behold the Twin Bucket system – which consists of . . . . two five- or six-gallon buckets with toilet seats.
One is clearly marked pee; the other is marked poo, and never the twain shall meet. “If urine mixes with feces, it becomes a dangerously infectious (and smelly) combination,” according to Green’s slide presentation.
Green said urine is not dangerous unless someone has a serious kidney disease, and especially if diluted, is not harmful to grass. Since there will be a lot of pee, the bucket should be emptied onto a permeable surface after every use.
The feces bucket, lined with a heavy-duty garbage bag, is a more serious proposition altogether, with lots of rules. It should be located away from living areas, but close enough to be easily accessible. It should include a privacy shelter, and a hand-washing station close by.
Each visit should end with a layering material to absorb moisture, reduce odors and deter flies. Sawdust, shredded paper and dry leaves work, but Green says pelletized garden lime is by far the best. Kitty-litter is a strict no because it turns poo into cement. When the bag is half full or less (it shouldn’t get too heavy for obvious reasons), it’s tied off and stored in a container like a green bin, away from food, water, kids, pets and vermin.
Poo (or pee) bucket, with lime, garbage bags, and foot-pump bladder.
A toilet seat on the bucket will make things so much more comfortable!
Foot-pump handwashing
Equally important is a serious post-poo hand-washing regime. Don’t count on hand-sanitizers, said Green. They’re better than nothing, but every trip to the poo bucket should end with soap and moving water, even if that water is cold. And until your hands are properly cleaned, you should touch nothing. Which rules out just opening the spigot on a container of water.
So how to get moving water when the water system is down and you can’t touch anything with your potentially contaminated hands?
That’s where the foot pumping system Green has set up at the front of the room comes in.
It consists of a container of water with tubes leading to a primer-bulb foot pump, from which emerges another tube that snakes up a pole, then bends down. Stepping on the pump siphons water from the container up the pole tube, where it then runs down into a bucket. Each pump of the foot results in a squirt of water, enabling Green to control the amount. The result? Controlled use of moving water to clean the hands without first touching anything.
Foot-pump hand-washing contraption demonstrated by DEEP’s Chris Green
is sturdy, easy to assemble and easy to use.
Hand-washing like this is not optional in a disaster situation, Green emphasized. Everybody must do it all the time to ensure the safety of everyone else.
Green said the system he’s suggesting is simple, cheap and efficient, key elements of what’s needed after a disaster. Most of the materials are available at outlets like Home Depot, and all the items he discussed in his presentation — buckets, garbage bags, lime, toilet paper, a primer bulb, tubing and water container – can easily be packed together for storage in a small space.
What you need to build a foot-pump handwashing station.
What you need for the two-bucket system.
DEEP chair Chris Green answers questions at the end of the session.
Alternative solutions have downsides
There are other ways of dealing with sanitation after a disaster, he said, but they all have downsides if it’s serious and long-lasting.
Porta-potties, for example. Unfortunately, there are only about 20,000 in all of B.C., not enough to serve even Vancouver on its own (the golden rule is one toilet per 20 people.) Plus they must be cleaned and emptied, a problem if roads are destroyed and trucks can’t reach them.
Latrines? A possibility if you have a yard, but do you know where the utility lines are before you start digging? Plus, they should be at least 10 feet from your residence, 10 feet from your property line and 100 feet from creeks and wells. Not an option for most multi-unit buildings or properties with minimal open space.
Composting? It takes special knowledge, materials and time to do it safely, and if it’s done wrong could create a major public health issue. The aftermath of a disaster probably isn’t the best time to get into this. Chemical toilets? Fine if you know how to do it and have a good supply of the needed chemicals.
Poop into a bucket, close it up tight and store it? Not a good idea for many reasons, including that you’ll quickly run out of buckets. “Bagging poo allows you to store it when it gets full and keep using the bucket. It keeps the poo in one place – no transferring, no splashing,” says Green’s presentation. Plus, a tight bucket lid can create anaerobic conditions, leading to the deadliest of poisons – botulism.
Green acknowledged that sanitation after a disaster is not a topic most people want to spend a sunny March morning addressing, but he did his best to keep the presentation light. One of his slides, for example, showed a “Tippy Tap,” an alternative hand-washing method.
It consisted of a water container roped to a branch at an angle, with a hole one-third of the way from the top of the container. Pulling a string attached to the container cap would tilt the bucket enough for water to pour out. Beside it, a bar of soap is hung from the branch on a string.
Tippy Tap slide from Disaster Sanitation presentation.
The slide itself wasn’t encouraging: “Easy to make, hard to aim and thus wasteful of water;” it said. “Best used outdoors.”
Green’s comment: “Not recommended.”
But discomfort with the topic of sanitation shouldn’t discourage people from honouring the work of the poo crews after a disaster, said Green. It’s a nasty job nobody wants to do, but it’s among the most important, essential and life-saving work that happens in a disaster.
In the end, he said, the sanitation workers may save more lives than the medical crews.