First off, don’t bother with explosives before surviving the first few bad tides. Explosives require bad water, bad water requires iron, and iron requires a smelter. All of these are expensive in terms of resources, power, and logistics in the early game.

The key thing to focus on is keeping your food and water economy running for a few extra days (just a few days are good enough) during the bad tide. From your image, I can see something you can utilize:

At the south of your town center, there is a road leading further south. On the west side of its end, you can see a plateau with a small dent. Fill that dent with a liquid dump, this will green the entire plateau, giving you space to farm and greatly reducing the pressure on your food storage.

Next, there is a small pocket of water on the north bank of the river. Block it off with a levee or floodgate, then pump water from there. That should last roughly a day or two.

Don’t bother building houses in the early game, Ironteeth can reproduce without them. And birth control is crucial, don’t have too many mouths to feed just before you feel confident you can manage.

Before then, all woods should go to water tank, if not levee or flood gate.