The advisory to boil water remains in Vancouver even though there was a lot less rain at the weekend than was forecast. The scenes of panic reported on in the paper on Saturday are, it is to be hoped, a thing of the past as people realise that boiling water isn’t all that hard, and then filtering it afterwards does get rid of most of the silt. I was amused at the note sent home from my son’s school which pointed out “detailed information on how to boil water has been published in all major newspapers and is available on line” — do they not teach you how to boil water in school these days? If anyone needs the info, here’s the WikiHow page — just remember you have to boil it for at least a minute to kill any bacteria. Mind you, reading the current advisory makes it clear that there isn’t actually any proven problem with the water here other than the look and taste of it, the authorities are just being careful (and no doubt mindful of the Walkerton disaster, although they dispute any connection).
The biggest consequence for most of Vancouver was that various coffee joints were shut (those that couldn’t guarantee boiling the water for long enough), as was our local tea shop. I found the latter particularly ironic given the likely role that tea, and the necessity of boiling water for it, played in cutting down infant mortality in the 1700s in Britain — a summary is in this article: Did tea and beer make Britain great?. Oh well, maybe it was shut because the contaminants in the water would affect the taste of the tea; I haven’t yet had a chance to ask.