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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

How ere you able to save water? Was there water pressure for a short period of time?

I always imagine water pressure being lost right away, so if you didn’t have water already stored you’d be SOL

Not OP, but the distribution system of water is almost entirely fed by gravity from a water tower. Losing water pressure usually means loss of the power to the pumps supplying the water towers, not breaks in the pipelines themselves. There's enough water stored in the water towers to satisfy usually a few hours of demand, and the water in the pipes might satisfy a few hours more if you live at a low enough elevation.

One of the issues in an earthquake is potential damage to the major distribution pipes. From “source” to “buffer” (local reservoirs used to maintain pressure) and the extent to which things in the network of pipes can be rerouted depends a lot on how it was built. In heavily built up areas there’s often “secondary buffers” like storage on the roofs of buildings in New York City.

Pressure in the “customer end” of the water supply network will still be available for a little while (minutes to hours) in the event of damage but damage will take time to repair and the impact of the damages ongoing effect and the time to repair make one of the most basic survival tips for the average person not otherwise maintaining survival supplies: “fill the bathtub and anything else you’ve got”. You might have 15 minutes before the broken pipe washes away enough dirt that pressure drops enough to stop the flow from your tap.

It was not lost right away, it was working for several hours, around 12, but with a very low pressure. Since this happened on February (summer time) we were lucky one of our neighbors had a pool full of water we used for the toilet :)

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