Emergency toilet: what to do when the toilet won't flush

The water goes off, or the street floods, or the ground shakes and nobody knows whether the sewer pipe under the house is still in one piece. The toilet looks normal. People keep using it. By the second evening the bathroom is the worst room in the house, and by the fourth somebody has diarrhea.

That second part is the reason this page exists. In a long emergency, what makes a family seriously ill is not usually hunger or cold. It is what comes out of people getting into what goes into people. The flush toilet hid that problem from us. When it stops working, you need a plan for the toilet the same day.

First: can you still flush?

Two different situations look the same from the bathroom.

• The water is off but the sewer works. A power outage that stops the pumps, a water main break up the street. The drain pipes still carry waste away by gravity. You can flush by pouring a bucket of gray water, the water from washing dishes or bathing, fast into the bowl. Pee can go down without flushing every time.
• The sewer itself may be broken. An earthquake, a flood, a sewage backup or an official notice. Don't flush and don't pour water down any drain. If the pipe is cracked, what you flush comes back up through your shower drain, your basement floor or your neighbor's. Oregon's emergency sanitation guidance says plainly: don't flush until officials tell you it's safe.

If you don't know which one you're in, treat it as the second until someone tells you otherwise. A bucket toilet for two days costs you nothing. A sewage backup costs you the house.

The two-bucket toilet

This is the method county health departments in Oregon and Washington teach after earthquakes, adopted from Christchurch, New Zealand. It works far better than it sounds, for one reason: mixed waste stinks and breeds flies; separated waste, with the solids kept dry and covered, barely smells at all.

What you need

• Two 5-gallon buckets with lids, marked PEE and POO in big letters
• Heavy trash bags for the poo bucket (Oregon State suggests 13-gallon, 3 to 5 mil)
• Cover material: a bag of sawdust, wood shavings, wood pellets, shredded paper or coir, and a scoop
• A seat: a snap-on bucket seat, the seat off your own toilet, or a pool noodle split down its length
• Toilet paper, disposable gloves, hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol, and soap
• A lidded outdoor trash can just for the full bags

All of it fits inside the two buckets, so the whole kit lives in a closet and takes up the space of two buckets. That is the cheapest thing on this page to do tonight.

The pee bucket

No liner. Urine from a healthy person carries few germs and is the easy half of the problem. When it is about a quarter full, or as heavy as you can carry safely, add some water if you have it and pour it onto soil: a corner of the yard, under a tree, well away from any well, stream or vegetable bed. Change the spot each time. Rinse and put it back.

If the sewer works and only the water is off, you can pour the pee down the toilet with a splash of gray water instead.

The poop bucket

Line it with a heavy bag. Put a layer of cover in the bottom. After each use, add about half a cup of cover, enough to hide everything, and close the lid. Toilet paper goes in this bucket, not the pee one. Fill it no more than half full: a full bag is too heavy to lift and too easy to split. Then tie it off, put it inside a second bag, tie that, and carry it out.

Anyone with diarrhea gets extra cover, and their bag gets tied off the same day. Their waste is the dangerous kind.

Cover material, best first

1. Sawdust or wood shavings, by a long way
2. Wood pellets (they take little storage space and soften with moisture)
3. Shredded paper, torn cardboard, dry leaves, coir, peat moss
4. Cat litter, or wood ash from a fireplace

Keep a bin of it next to the bucket with the scoop in it. When a bucket toilet smells, there is nearly always too little cover on it.

Where the full bags go

Double-bagged and tied, into a lidded trash can outside, in the shade, where children, dogs and raccoons can't get at it, and away from the kitchen and any water. Don't put it in the regular trash and don't throw it in a dumpster. Hold it until your city or county says how they want it collected. After a big disaster they will.

If you are rural and the wait runs to weeks, the bags can be buried in a pit at least 2 feet (60 cm) deep, 100 feet (30 m) or more from any well, stream or water source, above any flood line, with the soil stamped back on top. On a septic system, check your county's guidance before putting anything with sawdust in the tank; carbon material can damage it.

In an apartment

The buckets work just as well in a bathroom with the window open or on a balcony. The bags go in a lidded bin on the balcony, not in the stairwell and not by the elevator. That is how a building falls out with itself.

Cover material is the hard part with no yard. Buy a bag of wood pellets or a bale of pine shavings now and keep it under the sink. Shredded paper from the recycling works in a pinch. And talk to the neighbors on your floor: a building with one agreed toilet plan and one agreed place for the bags is a healthy building.

What I'd store, and what it costs

For a family of four for two weeks: two buckets with lids, a snap-on seat, a box of heavy bags, two bags of sawdust or one of pellets, a box of gloves, soap and sanitizer. Most of it is on the shelf at any hardware store. It's the one part of a disaster kit that almost nobody has, and the one you'll want on the first evening.

Don't forget the water side of it. Hand-washing and dishwashing come out of your stored water, which is why the water-per-person numbers include more than just drinking. If the tap is running but the city has issued a notice, read what a boil-water notice means before you brush your teeth.

This page is information, not medical advice. The two-bucket method and the setup numbers follow Oregon State University Extension and the PHLUSH Twin Bucket guidance; the hand-washing rule is the CDC's.