Two weeks after Hurricane Helene ravaged Asheville, North Carolina, the majority of the city still doesn't have running water. It may be weeks before it returns. Not only does this make it impossible for schools, restaurants, and many other businesses from opening, it means that most people can't even flush their toilets as they normally would. Volunteers have stepped up with a solution.
"It is an extreme health crisis looming if we don't get these toilets flushed," said Elle DeBruhl of a group called Flush AVL
Her group and others like it are collecting grey water from ponds, wells, and other places in five gallon buckets. Then they're going door-to-door offering to flush people's toilets. The volunteers are also putting huge gray water containers around town so anyone can fill a bucket.
From NPR:
The city and county are providing gray water too, at nearly a dozen emergency distribution sites. At Asheville Middle School, residents pull up in their cars to fill buckets and bags with gray water from a silver tanker truck.
"The hardest thing is keeping my commode flushed," said Loretta Smith. "That's the roughest part, I got family members. It's just not me, you know? So we can't have all that sitting around like that."In the days after the storm, Asheville residents found all kinds of resourceful ways to flush. Smith says she got help from a neighbor who has a small pond. Akila Parks says he had been using floodwater left over from the storm.
"We had a flooded garage and we used the water from the garage to flush. So seeing the blessing from the storm," Parks said, "just surviving."
Previously:
• Patented tube for breathing air from behind toilet bend during a fire
• New toilet paper dispenser delivers 3 squares if you watch a 30-second commercial 💩
