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Where will you go, when you've got to go in a disaster?

Sanitation & Hygiene 

Safe water, toilets, and good personal hygiene are critical to your health and survival because they help prevent the spread of illness and disease. In a major disaster, like an big earthquake, our water and sewer systems will be damaged, rendering them unusable for weeks, months, and possibly years. Imagine no working toilets or faucets for 1 to 12 months! How will you stay clean? Do you have the materials needed to create a safe and functioning toilet and hand-washing station for your family? Creating your own sanitation and hygiene system is a "must do" for emergency preparedness. 
Check out this video for how to prepare for sanitation in a disaster. Scroll down for additional information and instructions on how to assemble inexpensive sanitation and handwashing stations for your emergency supplies.

Two-bucket Emergency Toilet system

In the aftermath of a disaster, people often feel vulnerable and scared. If your faucets and toilets aren't working, your family members will appreciate the comfort and safety of a simple twin-bucket toilet system. It's easy to put together and inexpensive. ​
Why two buckets for a toilet? 
To separate pee and poo.  And why separate pee and poo? Most of the volume of your waste is in urine, and urine is not toxic, at least right away. Poo is a lot less volume.  On the other hand, poo contains microorganisms that can cause dysentery, cholera and a whole host of dangerous diseases. For that reason, you need to keep poo separate and dispose of it carefully.
Also, most of the odor from porta-potties and public toilets comes from urine mixed with poo .  Keeping them separate provides a much less unpleasant environment. You can dilute pee one-to-one and pour it on the ground, in your garden, or on your compost, or somewhere away from your living area.  It won’t breed bacteria there, and it won’t smell a lot.  And that takes care of most of your volume challenge.  There are differing instructions on diluting pee before disposing of it; some say 4 to 1 water; it shouldn’t be less than 1 to 1.
How to set up a 2-bucket toilet system
  • Get two plastic 5-gallon buckets. Home improvement stores, restaurants, or bakeries are great places to find inexpensive buckets or free used buckets. These buckets don’t need to be food-grade, but they do need to be sturdy enough to support your weight.
  • Label one bucket "pee" and one bucket "poo".  Download the ready-made labels or call your city or county emergency management departments to ask if they have free labels available to pick up. 
  • Purchase or make two toilet seats. You can adapt a regular toilet seat, or buy a seat that is designed for use with buckets. Most camping or outdoor sections of stores carry the a toilet seat with a lid that can fit onto a 5-gallon bucket. They snap on and off easily.
  • Buy a roll of sturdy, heavy-duty, plastic garbage bags (13 to 20 gallon size). Trash compactor bags are recommended, because they are stronger.  You are going to line your poo bucket with a bag so that you can empty your poo bucket simply and cleanly.  Don’t let the liner get more than half full before changing the liner. 
  • Supplies for cleanup. Purchase toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, soap, and disposable gloves (for times when you replace the garbage bag). Scroll down to learn how to build a hand washing station.  
  • Gather a supply of carbon-based material. This can be sawdust, shredded newspaper, bark chips, dry leaves,  peat moss, woodstove pellets – anything that’s compostable carbon.   Ask an office for a free bag of shredded paper.   Get a free bag of sawdust from a lumber yard.  The purpose of the carbon material is to create a cover layer in your poo bucket every time you use it.  This will fill up your bag liner faster, but there are important reasons to do this: covering up your poo will reduce odors, it will help keep flying insects away reducing the possibility of spreading infections, and the carbon will start the composting process for the waste, transforming it into a safe material faster. 
  • Store your supplies inside your buckets, so they are ready when you need them. 
Where to Put Your 2-bucket system
For modesty, and to keep out of the rain,  there are shelters like this one you can buy at camping and sports stores, or you can construct your own.  Location depends on your particular circumstances – on your deck, on in a select place in the yard that is flat and easy to get to in the dark.  It’s important to have enough room to have pee and poo buckets next to each other so you can make sure the poo bucket always gets the toilet paper.  If you have a big enough bathroom and are still living in your house, why not put them there? You also need a wash station nearby, with a place to hold soap, water and towels.  There are lots and lots of do-it-yourself designs on line, and ideas for pouring water, because you are not going to be using your sink.  I am going to talk about this in more detail in the next section on hygiene.

Waste Disposal

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Always be careful when bagging your contents.  For example, wear disposable gloves, and afterwards, always wash your hands with soap and water, or alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Obviously, you may need to store your poo bags for quite a while, as pickup service is unlikely to be available for some period until utility services are restored. 
  • It’s important that you do NOT bury these bags, as animals can and will dig them up and rupture the bags and create a mess. 
  • If you have an extra garbage bin, that can be a safe temporary storage for your family.  Do NOT use recycle or garbage cans that you use for regular pickup by the garbage service. You won’t want to use it for that after you’ve been storing poo in it. Your poo bin will have to be separate and stay safe until public services resume and can come pick up your stored bags.
  • Your neighborhood might organize a common storage site that can be a temporary disposal station for a neighborhood’s waste for a time.  It needs to have sufficient capacity for the neighborhood, and be a secure container that is safe from children, pets, rats and flies.

Hand-washing Systems

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Hand hygiene is critical to preserving health. All you need for a hand-washing station is a jug of clean water (potable) with an on/off spigot, soap, towels, and a catch bucket for the used water. If possible, set up two hand-washing stations: one near the area where food is prepared and the other next to your emergency toilet to encourage people to wash their hands after using the bathroom. 
  • Soap and water are still the best long-term solution to cleanliness.  Hypoallergenic soap in general because of its effect on resistant bacteria, it is a very good idea in this situation.
  • Hand sanitizer (over 60 percent alcohol) is important to have for emergency use when water isn’t handy.  It doesn't remove dirt and grease, but it helps to prevent spreading germs.  
  • Foaming hand soap is handy when your hands are visibly dirty.  It doesn’t require water to lather up, helping you to save your stored water supplies.
How to build a hands-free wash system 
The simplest way to make a hand-washing station is to place a water jug with a spigot on a table or counter, and drain it into a bucket or wash basin. You can also place a bucket underneath the sink and disconnect the plumbing to allow the sink to drain into a bucket. We recommend constructing what is called a Tippy Tap.  It’s not difficult to put together, requires few moving parts, and will allow you to wash your hands without touching a spigot. A Tippy Tap is operated by a foot lever, and thus reduces the chance for bacteria transmission, as the user touches only the soap.  It uses only 2 ounces of water to wash your hands, versus 17 ounces using a bowl.  Download the instructions from the CDC on How to build a Tippy Tap. 

More Resources

Check out these sources for more information and practice: 
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Check out the Emergency Toilet Project
The Emergency Toilet Project
The Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization (RDPO) created the Emergency Toilet Project:  
Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene after a Cascadia Disaster
In this video, you'll hear Brian Dobecki talk in depth about:
  • Water and sewage infrastructure vulnerabilities
  • Sanitation, including information on the 2-bucket emergency toilet, pit latrines, and septic systems
  • Hygiene, keeping your hands and body clean
Brian Dobecki is an Emergency Preparedness Trainer and Yamhill County CERT member. He spoke at our 2018 Cedar Hills Ready! QuakeUp! event. 
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Click image to download the article.
Survival Basics: Sanitation and Waste Management
Written by Oregon State University Extension Service, this article concisely describes how to build a two-bucket toilet system and a hand-washing system for an emergency. 
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