Note: I write this from a sunny window seat of Starbucks on Bank Street South, forty-five minutes drive from home. I had to drop my eldest off at a writing workshop and am using the time to catch up on my own writing. I’m surrounded by an interesting array of other folks without power, offering a positive social upside. I am unbathed and wearing a hat to hide the fact. Cancelled in-town business meetings scheduled today for fear of giving offence and appearing utterly eccentric. (Catch you next week, Pierre)
It was an interesting day around Ottawa yesterday.
High winds equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane rocked Ottawa and environs. Our appliances quivered with intermittent brownouts all day until the entire system kicked out around 8:00 pm. We lit candle lanterns and put the youngest kids to bed, while the eldest read by the light of headlamps. By nine I had conked out.
According to news report areas of the city could be without power for at least another forty-eight hours. I’m guessing that could include us, as we’re few and far between in the rural areas, and thus not a high priority for immediate restoration. Four hundred and fifty trees are reported down across the city, two persons were admitted to hospital for treatment caused by loose debris and one young woman had both her legs broken by a falling tree. At least one boil water advisory is in effect. No bathing. No drinking from the tap. No flushing toilets. No technology-reliant working from home. On the previous day more than one hundred were killed as tornadoes swept across the southern United States (Correction: more than three hundred). All terribly tragic, or in Ottawa’s case mostly mildly inconvenient, but pretty small potatoes compared to Japan and Haiti post-disaster. We can ask what this world is coming to, but I think many of us have a pretty good idea by now.
Simultaneously, 80,000 residents of Barrhaven, Manotick and Ottawa South received notice yesterday of an immediate ban on all outdoor watering through the summer. This includes car washing, lawn watering, splash pads, filling kiddie pools, and garden watering. There is a major system repair to be completed that affects the amount of potable water available. There will be $500 fines in place for non-compliance but, more importantly, if residents don’t voluntarily comply, the system itself will collapse which could mean no safe drinking water for anyone. The city has offered to fill private swimming pools and hot tubs at no charge, provide bottled water and a $50 household credit towards the purchase of a rainbarrel. As expected, the outcry has been swift and sharp, ranging from asking for more effective communication from the city to nervous breakdowns around how to amuse small children over the long summer months. Oh, we are so loathsome of bumps and change!
As the high winds, significant international disasters, and the emergency water main work all attest to is how little control we have over the litany of things that can, but for the Grace of God, affect each of us. But within these events lie seeds for change.
If tragedy or a perceived high level of inconvenience (pain) are significant drivers for behavioural change in humans, here are some ‘what if’s’ worth considering to leverage the current events for longer-term personal and communal benefit:
• What if more city residents, beyond the affected areas, understood the benefits of and implemented rainbarrel water collection in their gardens?
• What if more residents and communities understood and implemented the Seven Steps to Emergency Preparedness promoted by the city? http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/emergency/before/seven_steps/index_en.html
• What if the city fast-tracked its research and approval of residential grey water systems? http://www.ottawa.ca/city_hall/master_plans/imp/section6/section6_2/6_2_5_green_technology_en.html
• What if the benefits of cold cellars, xeriscaping, alternative lawns, renewable energy, composting toilets, ice houses , and other such residential self-help solutions were more widely understood and adopted?
While there are a wide variety of steps we can take immediately as individual households to be more independent, I think it’s equally important to help strengthen the people and communities around us, sooner rather than later. Education and diffusion of innovation efforts require time and do not come without the expenditure of significant effort and short-term (sometimes long-term) pain. But if the aphorism that “No man is an island” is true, then I have no desire to experience the excruciating moral dilemma of someday being one warm, dry, well-fed, thirst-quenched household island amidst greater community chaos.