Water Emergency in Boston, MA

A water main broke in Boston this Saturday, dumping around 8 million gallons of water into the Charles river every hour. This break has caused nearly 2 million residence of the greater Boston area to be without clean drinking water. People have been told to boil water rapidly for at least one minute before consuming water or using it to cook, in order to kill any possible bacteria that is contaminating the water due to the leak. I was actually in Boston when this event occurred and was eating lunch in a restaurant with my family when a police officer came into the building and announced that the water was "unsafe to drink". Soon after the news had been spread, there was a run on bottled water in all of the stores. Most stores completely ran out of bottled water on Saturday night, although the orders for all of the stores' supplies of bottled water was greatly increased to accommodate the increased demand in the coming days. Here is a link to an article that has a good diagram of the area and a quick video of the damage:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978210983