A Criminal Act!

Our local water reservoir was tampered with overnight, by some criminal individual.

We were alerted by the township early this morning, NOT to Drink, Bathe, Wash Dishes, Boil or in ANY way use or touch our water.

Someone put something in our local water reservoir, a sample has been flown to Vancouver, as yet no one knows what has been put in our local drinking water.

Do you know how difficult it is not to turn on the tap, to wash your hands, give your dog a drink, bathe the scraped knee of your child, rinse off your peeled potatoes, wash your hands after using the toilet, I could go on and on about the use of water. Try not turning on the taps for 12 hours. That is how long it has been for us so far.

Because we live here on the Pacific Northwest, an earthquake zone, and have been repeatedly told to store 3 days of water, I have always kept extra water on hand just incase.

Well let me tell you the water I had stored, has proved barely enough for 12 hours, never mind 36 hours!! Will have to store more from now onwards, this has been a wake up call in regards to water.

How scary! Makes one realize how very vulnerable we really are.

Glad you at least had some water stored... we'd be okay here for several days as I always keep a water supply on hand but I doubt most people would be as fortunate.

I still have some from Y2k stored, hope I won't need it. It has been thought for a long time how easy it would be for some evil doer to do us all in through our water supply. So sorry to hear about this , there will probably be copy-cats if it hits the news.

Let us know when you find out what it is.

This message was edited Friday, Jul 27th 11:39 PM

It is unbelievable how someone could be so mean and cruel to put so many peoples lives in jeopardy.I hope they find this person soon before he tries this again. It could have been much worse if it hadn't been caught in time. Thank God that everyone was alerted. I'm so sorry that you have to live without water until they find out what was put in it. No one can know how hard it is not to have water unless they have lived through it.I will pray that whatever was put in your water was not harmful and you and your town will be able to use the water again very soon.

Our town of 7,500 still cannot use the water, it has now been 24 hours!

We should hear sometime today, if we can start using water and what was put in our local reservoir.

It is a realy scary thought that our water was tampered by some individual, and we could all be dead or very ill.

We had had a shower, breakfast, and I had done a load of laundry before we were alerted not to bathe or use the water at all!

Hi gardendragon, heard on news this same thing only it was nanaimo.They then said it was a hoax nothing wrong with nanaimo water. I heard this on friday am . It must have been ladysmith instead. Hope this is also a hoax and you find out soon. If you need water please feel free to come and get some from us. your neighbour Jack.

This message was edited Saturday, Jul 28th 12:12 PM

what a horrible situation ya'll are facing. my heart goes out to all of you.

A similar "Hoax" was done in a small community near here this past year. Someone put some of that dye the use to color water in fountains and turned the water a sickly bluegreen color. No one could use the water until it was tested and it sure made a lot of folks angry! Thankfully it was "safe" and no permanent harm was done but these things are frightening when you realize how vulnerable our supplies are!

We had one here too a couple of years ago, had the water company come around with leaflets and bottled water, it turned out to be nothing at all, ;lasted just 12 hours. cost them a furtune, better safe than sorry of corse, but none the less annoying tho.

Thank you lord the water in Ladysmith is Allright. just flush your home and get :} back to normal. If now a water shortage WE in Nanaimo will help. Watching and ready if needed. They were short of h2o before this happened, thousands of gallons later in flushing, Hopeing for bc rain to help out. jack

3 days later we are able to use our water again, after flushing out all our water pipes, had to run the hot taps till they ran cold, and then the cold taps till they ran ice cold. This flushed the household water tanks.

Still do not know what was put in our water reservoir, as all tests came back inconclusive.

Some people infered it was all a hoax, perhaps it was, but it is frightening to think we are so at the mercy of what some people consider a funny prank! I consider it a criminal act and so do the police, who are activally investigating.

Oh I am so sorry that you are having to go through this. We have been without water when our pump and/or well have had problems. It is not fun. Last year our well went out on one of the hotest days of the year. Luckily, our well repairman understood our need to water our livestock and fixed our well the same day.

Some of our neighbors are on the piped in "rural water" system. They had a "Caddyshack" situation several years ago. A guy who had a farm/creek near the water tank/reservoir had a problem with racoons. So he hired two "buffoons" to dynamite the raccons' dam. What they didn't realize was that the water pipe ran under the creek. When they bombed the dam, they also split the pipe and some of the contaminated creek water backwashed into the water tank and 1000's of people could not use the water until they completely drained the tank and refilled it again. Looking at the humorous side, we call it our "Caddyshack" situation. (Remember the movie where Bill Murray blows up the golf course chasing after the prairie dogs.)

Where I live we had 11 water main breaks and couldn't use the water for a couple days. Fortunately, I had lots of water stored to use from Y2K that I had kept rotated. You never realize how much you miss water till you don't have any.

Many years ago when I was living in another city our water got tainted. A worker accidently put either too much or the wrong chemicals in it. We couldn't drink the water for a week. I got in the habit of keeping extra water on hand then.

A couple of years ago, when I was living back home in Moncton, the reservoir was contaminated with E.Coli. We couldn't drink the water for A MONTH!!! It wasn't so bad for my roomate and I - I mean, we had jobs, so it was an inconvenience, but we could afford to buy bottled water. It was a real problem, though, for the homeless and those living in shelters who couldn't afford to buy bottled water. What a horrible situation. You make the best of it, though. There was a rumour going around that it was the "Midnight Poopers" who had contaminated the water supply, and that their list of demands included getting rid of the hideous flowering cabbage the city insists on planting downtown. :)