In a disaster situation, it is important to remember those who already have their own unique challenges when going about their daily lives. All too often the disabled are overlooked in favor of rushing help to a community overwhelmed with a loss of basic services because of flooding or other severe storm damage that might have necessities like power and sanitation crippled for days, weeks, or in extreme cases months and even years.
Flooding in particular presents a particular hazard that goes beyond property damage, affecting basic health by contaminating fresh water sources and forcing displaced survivors to pack into emergency shelters. In the United States, most places used for emergency shelters are not usually equipped to handle so many people all at once like churches, school gymnasiums, or other sporting venues. This puts that much more strain on already iffy sanitation services in a disaster struck area and makes the disabled that much more difficult to accommodate if they have special needs to take into account. Potentially life-threatening infections that contaminated water can spread include, but are not limited to, E. coli, giardia, salmonella, and hepatitis A.
The easiest solution to this problem is amazingly simple –portable toilets — in other words, the humble porta potty.
Portable rental toilets, or porta potty as many call them, are self-contained chemical toilets. Just as importantly, however, the porta potty can be found in ADA compliant models. They need no existing plumbing in place to hook up to on site where they’re needed most, so if local waste treatment facilities are damaged they won’t add any stress to an already compromised system. Sewage disposal can be trucked from where temporary shelters are to a nearby community that isn’t as badly affected. This, combined with bottled water distribution and portable hand wash stations that many portable toilet companies now have available, the potential for the spread of disease is radically reduced.
By including ADA compliant bathrooms to these temporary disaster situations, that extra protection is extended to not only the disabled, but to the elderly who can have more difficulty sitting and standing in confined spaces (such as a standard porta potty), or disaster victims who have been injured and can’t get around as easily as usual. Making sure portable ADA compliant bathrooms are included to disaster areas along with disability accessible portable hand wash stations protects not only the disabled, but the elderly and the rest of a stressed population from the spread of serious diseases.