Making Use of Emergency Water Filters in Crisis Situations

As a municipal employee or business owner, there may come a time when you are called upon to help coordinate emergency recovery efforts following a natural or manmade catastrophe. When that happens, one of the most crucial undertakings will be to educate the people in ways to create a clean drinking water supply. Although people have been instructed that they should maintain a supply of bottled water for emergency situations, the majority will not have done as they should have. It may be up to you to help them develop safe water which doesn’t have any contaminants by using some sort of emergency water filter.

In order to be able to help others, you must first learn some basic procedures to use to filter contaminated water for general use. Ideally, people will be able to boil their water. Boiling kills bacteria and other organisms that can cause disease. After boiling, water can be strained through a clean cloth or coffee filter, both of which make great emergency water filters that will eliminate particles. However, if there is a widespread power outage, boiling water may not be possible.

Cleaning water without boiling it can be harder. To do so people must use a combination of both settling and filtering. If water appears cloudy and has a weird color, these methods can lessen 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 running the water through an emergency water filter made of a clean cloth attached to the top of a large container. The water may have to be filtered more than once and then allowed to settle one more time before being clear enough to drink.

Another safeguard can be treating the water that has been strained through a portable water purification system with chemicals in order to 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 after all of this processing, it can be poured from container to container a few times in order to put air into it again.