Crater from water main break on Lowry Ave. N.E.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Clean-up efforts are continuing in an area of northeast Minneapolis after a major water main break flooded basements of homes and businesses.
According to a city spokesman, 28 homes and two businesses were without water service. The main had been repaired as of Monday morning, but crews were required to drop chlorination chemicals into the lines to sanitize them. They have to wait 24 hours to test lines after they decontaminate so it will likely be Tuesday afternoon before they can restore water service.
The 24-inch water pipe, buried eight feet under the pavement in the 200 block of Lowry Avenue N.E., burst open shortly before 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning.
"I heard a lot of noise and came out and looked and saw water bubbling up in the middle of the street down there," Barb Rogers, who lives a few doors down from the epicenter of the burst, now marked by a crater in the middle of Lowry Ave.
"I tried to flush my toilet and nothing happened, so that pretty much confirmed for me that the water main was broken."
Rogers was making due with bottled water, and was happy to report her basement was still dry. Some elderly neighbors a couple of doors down, however, weren't so lucky.
"They ended up with five feet of water mixed with sewage in their basement," Roger said, "So we helped them get to a hotel because they couldn't stay there because (Centerpoint) came to shut off their gas."
Rogers said the neighbor, who is hearing impaired and in her 60's, has a 95-year-old mother who has lived in that house since 1927.
"They're very frustrated. The mother has a little Alzheimer's too, and she's very confused, and it's very hard for the daughter."
A few doors down at The Curb, a new and used consignment shop, they were trying to salvage items they had stored in the basement before it flooded. Carly Myers, the store's manager, said she had lost an extensive comic book collection worth $2,000.
"I had a signed Hell Boy and a signed Man with a Screaming Brain and some others" she explained, "It's really nice, or it was really nice. It's not nice anymore."
A line of silt remained five feet high on the walls, marking the high point of the water. Sand and silt had gushed out of a toilet and spread throughout the basement.
The owner of the building, Keith Lee, said he'd been told his boiler would probably have to be replaced because of the flood damage. And that could take two to three weeks, which would make it tough for those who rent an apartment above the store.
"I just want to be put back in the same shape I was before this incident happened," Lee told KARE.
He said water main breaks such as this should be a wake-up call about the city's aging infrastructure.
"This is a very good example of how we have to really start being a little more concerned," he said, "A city official told me this was a 24-inch water main. That's a lot of water moving through that, and that was over 100 years old."
The cause of the break is undetermined, although some neighbors suggested freezing and thawing may have caused the street to expand and put pressure on the pipe.
Matt Liable, the city's media relations director, told KARE that the extreme cold was probably not to blame.
"Those water mains are placed eight feet below the street so they'll be below the frost line, and won't be affected by the cold."
One story circulating among retailers in the neighborhood was that the city had been called to that block of Lowry Avenue one week before the break, to check out a complaint of water seeping into the basement of a business.
Liable said the public works director wasn't aware of such a complaint, but would be checking records Monday when city offices opened again.
(Copyright 2011 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)