Hurricane season 2024 has arrived. Florida’s hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. During a hurricane event, interruptions to your water service may occur. It is important that you have enough water on hand prior to the hurricane’s arrival. Should a water service outage occur, Toho Water Authority (Toho) will restore service to customers as soon as possible but a water advisory may be issued. The following advises you on how to prepare and the types of water advisories that can be issued.
Drinking water and non-drinking water
Access to water should be a significant part of any hurricane plan for your household. Households should have enough water to last at least three days. Make sure to account for the number of people and each pet taking shelter in your home when calculating water consumption. There are two categories of water you should make provisions for:
- Drinking Water: You can use sanitized food-grade containers with lids in order to store water that can be used for drinking, cooking, brushing your teeth and washing dishes. Store at least one gallon of water per day for each person and pet in your household.
- Other Water Uses: Storing water in a bathtub, large storage bin or clean trash can is one way you can make provisions for flushing toilets, bathing and other ways that don’t involve food preparation or ingestion. When planning, it’s important to make sure the drain doesn’t leak in your bathtub.
Water Advisories:
There are three different types of water advisories that may be issued to inform customers.
- Precautionary Boil Water Advisory: This means water service has been restored and the water is being tested to ensure it’s safe to drink. As a precaution, you are advised to boil water for one minute before consumption.
- Boil Water Notice: This notice means tests results have revealed that the water is unsafe to drink and must be boiled for one minute before consumption.
- Don’t Drink the Water Notice: This notice indicates testing has revealed the water is unsafe to drink even when boiled. In this circumstance, bottled water should be used instead.
If you are in a situation where you can’t boil your water, add eight drops of unscented household liquid bleach per gallon of water, stir well and let stand for 30 minutes before use. As an alternative, purification tabs can be bought from sporting goods stores and pharmacies which can be used to prepare water for drinking.
How will I know if a water advisory is in effect?
Toho notifies customers either by door hanger or phone message. Advisories are also posted to our News & Alerts section on tohowater.com.
