Blackout-Readyby Crisis-Ready Society

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Sanitation · Live with and maintain the system · sanitation-26

Run a hygiene routine when power and water pressure fail

In a blackout, taps may stop and dirty hands spread illness fast. Plan how the household washes, cleans and handles waste using stored water.

How

  1. Set up handwashing that needs no pressure: a bucket or jerrycan with a tap, or a tippy tap, with soap beside it. UNICEF lists these as handwashing facilities.
  2. Place stations where nobody can miss them, such as by every toilet and at the entrance (UNICEF), and in the kitchen.
  3. Wash hands with soap before preparing food or eating, and after the toilet or changing a nappy (WHO).
  4. Ration water, but not below Sphere's 15 L per person per day for drinking, cooking and hygiene. Sphere targets up to 20 L in extreme climates or with medical needs.
  5. Catch handwashing, dish and laundry water in a bucket. Pour it onto a mulch basin (sanitation-15) or into a soakaway pit of rocks and coarse gravel (UNICEF).
  6. Never wash yourself, hands or clothes, or use a toilet, where you collect drinking water (WHO).
  7. Stock hygiene supplies for the whole outage: wet wipes, hand sanitiser, nappies and sanitary towels (Sweden's MCF).
  8. Bag used period products and nappies as rubbish; never put them in toilet buckets (WREMO).
  9. If someone has diarrhoea, give oral rehydration salts mixed exactly as the packet says (WHO-formula sachets: 1 sachet in 1 litre of safe water; many pharmacy brands use 200 mL). See medical-30.
  10. Get urgent care for confusion or drowsiness, muscle cramps, weakness (unable to sit up) or dizziness (WHO).
  11. If toilets cannot flush, use the emergency toilet in sanitation-25.

Safety: Diarrhoea can kill through dehydration, especially in children and older people. Use oral rehydration salts early and seek care for the danger signs.

Do these first

Sources

  1. Handwashing stations and supplies for the COVID-19 response. UNICEF, accessed 2026-11
  2. Key messages on cholera (poster). World Health Organization (hosted by MIMU), accessed 2026-11
  3. Sphere Handbook, Water supply standard 1: access and water quantity (interactive edition). Sphere Association, accessed 2026-11
  4. Basics of home emergency preparedness. Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MCF), accessed 2026-11
  5. Emergency toilets (two-bucket method). Wellington Region Emergency Management Office (WREMO), New Zealand, accessed 2026-11

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