apply this scenario to your prep plans
and if you're on private well water then please post and gloat
http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/10/west-virginia-coal-chemical-spill/
and if you're on private well water then please post and gloat
http://ecowatch.com/2014/01/10/west-virginia-coal-chemical-spill/
A large spill of a chemicals used to remove impurities from coal occurred Thursday in Charleston, WV, contaminating the Elk River less than a mile upstream of the intake for the state’s largest drinking water treatment plant. As many as 300,000 West Virginia residents in nine counties have been told not to bathe, cook or wash clothes using their tap water, and numerous schools, hospitals and nursing homes, restaurants and other businesses are without water. President Obama and West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency today.
For some, the warnings may have come too late. The Charleston Area Medical Center reported this morning that it had already begun to treat people complaining of contamination-related illnesses. By late Friday, The Guardian reported that 671 people were so ill that they called into the poison control center with reports of vomiting, dizziness, nausea, headaches, diarrhea, reddening skin, itches and rashes.
Around Noon on Thursday, officials from the state Department of Environmental Protection’s air-quality division discovered the foaming agent 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM, leaking from a 48,000-gallon storage tank directly into the Elk River. The facility is owned by Freedom Industries a subsidiary of Etowah River Terminal, LLC. The spill had not been reported by the company. It’s still unclear how much of the chemical spilled into the river or how long the advisory will last.
Convenience and grocery stores have sold out of water. After reports that people had begun looting bottled water, armed National Guard troops had to escort and stand guard over a truck carrying clean water to a distribution point set up in the Charleston Civic Center.
“It’s like a zombie apocalypse here,” said Charleston resident Barbara Paxton. “The scary thing is at 10:30 a.m. yesterday, I read online that there was a smell in the area, and they were ‘investigating.’ I did not know until 5 in the evening that I was not supposed to use the water.”