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Water break parches East End 20 million gallons lost in Oakland rupture Friday, August 04, 2000 By Mike Rosenwald, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
When Dave McEvoy woke up yesterday morning, he turned on the TV news to see what was happening. There was a water main break in the city. It looked bad.
McEvoy heard the location: North Dithridge Street and Centre Avenue in Oakland. The apartment building where he works as an electrician is on that corner.
"I thought it might be a good idea to get to work," he said later.
He took a double-take when he got to the building. There was a gaping hole in Dithridge, 25 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Water was spewing in the air and flowing down Centre Avenue, as McEvoy put it, like the Youghiogheny River.
"If you would have had a boat or a raft, you could have ridden down Centre Avenue," he said. "There were rapids and everything. Never in my life have I seen something like that. I wish I had a camera."
It flowed that way for a couple hours, two feet high, riding up lawns, leaving 50-pound boulders in the middle of the street and causing thousands of city residents to be puzzled about why there was no water coming from their faucets when they woke up.
What happened was this: At 6:11 a.m., a 5-foot portion broke off a 20-inch-wide main that was connected to the Herron Hill Pumping Station at Dithridge and Centre.
John M. Hanna, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority, said the main flowed from the pumping station to Squirrel Hill and to reservoirs in the Hill District that supply the neighborhood and much of upper Oakland.
More than 8,000 residences and businesses and 50,000 people in Squirrel Hill, upper Oakland, the Hill District, Point Breeze, Bloomfield and Greenfield were affected, as were hospitals and businesses. Some 20 million gallons of water were lost.
Crews worked throughout the day and into the evening to reroute water to different mains and, by 3 p.m., water was beginning to flow, albeit not strongly, to some of the affected neighborhoods.
At 8 yesterday evening, Hanna said workers were still struggling to return service to optimum. "It'll probably be before midnight before pressure is back to normal," he said.
As crews scrambled to correct the lull in service, a new problem arose, Hanna said.
"The next problem is that the Herron Hill Resevoir, which serves all the affected neighborhoods, is completely drained," he said. "Our next mission is to get that filled back up. So, we're asking people in the six neighborhoods to conserve water... through Friday, so we can pump water back into the reservoir."
The crews were also working to fix the broken main, which is cast iron and dates back to the turn of the century -- not this one, but the last. Hanna is not yet sure why the main broke, but he thinks there was probably a weak portion that succumbed to a sudden surge in water pressure. He said the main was examined and determined to be in otherwise good condition.
"Man-made material does fail," he said. "Unfortunately, this was a pretty bad break."
He's seen worse: two 34-inch mains in the last two years and a 120-inch one near the Waterworks Mall in the early 1980s.
This failure was particularly troubling to hospitals. UPMC Presbyterian had to cancel hundreds of elective surgeries and procedures, according to spokesman Frank Raczkiewicz. The hospital was able to switch to another main that provided some water pressure, but not much.
The city's fire bureau helped out by pumping water into the facility, Chief Pete Micheli said. The bureau also added equipment to every alarm so trucks would be able to connect to hydrants far away from a fire's source in case nearby hydrants weren't working.
UPMC Montefiore and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic were using bottled water, Rackiewicz said. UPMC Rehabilitation Hospital in Squirrel Hill was also using bottled water and flushing toilets from water used for two 80,000 gallon rehab pools.
UPMC Shadyside was not affected.
The Indian Palace Cuisine restaurant was. Harwinder Sing, the cook at the Centre Avenue restaurant just a couple of blocks down river from the main break, showed up at 10:30 a.m. to get ready to open an hour later.
The restaurant does a brisk lunch business, with the buffet being a particular favorite. When Sing opened the door, he said out loud, "Oh my." There were puddles in the dining room and kitchen.
"We can't open today," he said. "How can we? I can't believe this. I had no idea."
Luckily, he said, they have insurance.
More than half the restaurants in Squirrel Hill were closed most of the day.
If there was anything good to come of the whole mess, it was the simple act of neighbors sticking together in the Hill District.
Bob Harpster, 71, woke up around 4:45 a.m. yesterday at his home on Bedford Avenue. He put some water in his kettle and started about his day.
A little after 9, someone up the street asked him if he had water.
"I guess I do," he said.
"Check again," he was told.
Sure enough, when he turned on his faucet, all it did was make strange sounds. He thought, "I wonder if Mrs. Peterson has water." Virginia Peterson, who said she is 58, lives a few houses down Bedford.
Harpster's neighbors helped him out when he was in the hospital for five months in 1993, and he hasn't forgotten what they did. He walked over to Peterson's house and found her waterless. He went home and brought her a couple of gallons of bottled water he had in storage.
"That was a nice thing he did," Peterson said.
Harpster said: "She needed water. I got her some. That's all."
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