2009.10.26
Photos -- and video -- of water main break on Thompson Memorial
Driving down Thompson Memorial, crossing Main going south, a new river temporarily popped up around 4:30 a.m. Saturday morning that made its way towards College Lutheran Church, closing half of the roadway and causing puddles to form on the other side. The source: a pipe leak at the corner of Richfield and Calhoun streets. The water department turned off all of the water in a three block radius of the leak, even at Mac n' Bob's for a while, until they found a cut-off on an older map.
"It was exhausting, but we came through," said the water department crew's supervisor, Denny Stanley. Most of the four-man crew including Roger Richardson, Mike Allen, and Moe Lazenby took turns in chilly chest-deep water on a 60-degree-daytrying to find the leak in the pipe and trying to put a clamp around what they thought was a normal leak around the diameter of the pipe.
It turned out that it was an eight-foot-split lengthwise down the pipe, he said. They replaced the section of six-inch watermain pipe just in time to start on their next assignment.
"As soon as we got done with that one around 5:30 or 6 o'clock, we had another pipe bust and got called out on another one," Stanley said. A crew from the street department also came out to help with cleaning up the mud and water on Thompson Memorial.
