Sanitation is the essential people leave off the list, because nobody enjoys thinking about it. Then the water stops, or the sewer backs up, and within a day it is the problem the whole household is thinking about. A toilet that will not flush, hands that cannot be washed, dishes that pile up and trash that is not collected are how illness gets into a house during a disruption.
This page explains what to have and why. Ready.gov’s kit page lists the sanitation and hygiene supplies to keep, the CDC’s food safety pages explain hand-washing and keeping food surfaces clean, and the EPA’s page explains how to make water safe when it must be used for hygiene. All three are cited below.
Why it matters
Clean water and working sewers are what keep illness rare in ordinary life. Both depend on electricity and on pipes. When either stops, the diseases that spread through unwashed hands and contaminated water come back quickly, and they hit children, elders and people who are already ill hardest. During a long disruption, keeping a household clean is as much a health measure as any medicine in the cabinet, and far cheaper.
Short emergencies are mostly inventory problems. For sanitation, the inventory is modest, and skipping it is what turns a week without water into a medical problem.
What to have
The hygiene items on Ready.gov’s kit list. Moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties, soap, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, feminine supplies, and the personal items your household uses. Ready.gov lists them; keep them with the rest of the kit, not scattered through the bathroom.
Water set aside for hygiene, separate from drinking water, counted in what the Water page tells you to store. Washing is where stored water goes fastest.
Hand sanitizer for the times when water is too precious to wash with, and soap for when it is not. The CDC explains when each is the right choice.
Heavy-duty trash bags, gloves, and a lidded bucket or container for waste that cannot go down a toilet or out to the curb. Your county emergency management office or public health department can tell you how it wants household waste handled when sewers are down; ask before you need to know.
Bleach, unscented, with the EPA’s disinfection instructions printed and kept with it, for cleaning surfaces and, when necessary, treating water.
Supplies for the people with particular needs: diapers and wipes, incontinence supplies, whatever a bedbound person or an infant requires. These are the items that run out first and are hardest to replace.
Disposable plates and utensils for the days when dishwater is a luxury.
What to do when it stops
- Find out what stopped. Water off, sewer backed up, or both? Your utility and your county announce which, and whether the sewer can be used at all.
- Protect the drinking water first. Everything below uses water that is not the drinking supply. Keep the two clearly separate, labeled, and out of reach of small children.
- Wash hands at the moments that matter: before handling food, after using any toilet, after handling waste, after caring for someone who is ill. The CDC's guidance on hand hygiene and food surfaces is short and worth printing.
- Deal with the toilet. If the sewer works but the water does not, a toilet can often still be flushed by pouring water into it; if the sewer is down, it cannot be used at all and waste must be bagged and stored as your county instructs. Do not improvise a method beyond what the county or public health department describes.
- Keep food surfaces and dishes clean with the water you have set aside, following the CDC's food safety basics, and use disposable dishes when that is the wiser choice.
- Contain trash and waste: bagged, tied, lidded, away from food and from the house if possible, until collection resumes or the county says where it goes.
Who may need help
Anyone bedbound or incontinent, and whoever cares for them. Households with an infant. Elders who cannot carry water or manage a bucket. People whose illness or medication makes an infection dangerous. Large households and apartment buildings, where one working solution serves many. Sanitation is also where neighbors most need each other’s discretion; a quiet offer of supplies matters more than a public one.
What not to do
Do not flush a toilet when the sewer is down; it will come back into the house. Do not use drinking water for washing while the drinking supply is uncertain. Do not skip hand-washing because water is short; that is the moment it matters most. Do not mix bleach with other cleaners, and do not use it at strengths other than what the EPA and the label say. Do not let waste pile up in the house or the yard. And do not be embarrassed to plan for this; every household has the same needs.
Longer disruptions
When sewers are out for weeks, sanitation becomes a systems problem for a neighborhood: where waste goes, how a shared latrine or a portable-toilet delivery is arranged with the county, who keeps the washing station at a gathering place supplied, how a church hall keeps its kitchen clean for a crowd. Public health departments plan for exactly this and will publish instructions. A neighborhood that already knows its people and its gathering place puts them into practice; the Community pages explain how.