SOUTHERN ORANGE COUNTY W/OUT WATER!!!!!

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Southern Orange County, California is without water for over a week due to a main water line break. 4.5 million people in deep, deep, s**t.

Yhe MAIN line broke. Not an artery, folks. The MAIN line. They say it will take 10 days to fix.

prep. Prep. PREP.

-- Mark (markmic@kynd.net), December 14, 1999

Answers

Ten days to fix? No water for 4.5 million people until December 24th?? I hope that Orange County had *very* good y2k contingency plans in place. If so, I pray that the means to provide emergency water to these folks is not long in coming, because they are about to find out how many of their residents are totally unprepared for something like this. Mark, is there any word as to the cause of the main line breaking?

-- (RUOK@yesiam.com), December 14, 1999.

http://news.excite.com/news/ap/991214/18/water-shortage

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

Water Supply Cut for S. Californians

Updated 6:40 PM ET December 14, 1999

By CHELSEA J. CARTER, Associated Press Writer

MISSION VIEJO, Calif. (AP) - A major water pipeline break left nearly 800,000 Southern Californians with short supplies Tuesday and residents were asked to stop filling pools, watering lawns and washing clothes for at least a week.

"This isn't a joke. This really is a crisis," said Dave Seymour of the Rancho Santa Margarita Water District. "People are taking it very seriously. We've had people calling to tell us their neighbors are watering the lawns and washing their cars."

The main rupture late Monday afternoon cut all or part of water supplies to 14 communities in south Orange County, including some of its wealthiest areas.

Calling the break "a catastrophic failure," officials shut off water to 80 construction sites to conserve supplies, bringing housing development to a standstill.

Although county and city officials had yet to issue citations or seize meters, water district employees were patrolling neighborhoods.

"We're simply asking for conservation at this point," said Keith Coolidge of the Municipal Water Districts of Orange County.

Crews were excavating around the break, and repairs were expected to take more than a week.

Officials were unsure what caused the rupture, but speculated recent earthquakes and corrosion may be to blame. The underground break sent concrete and debris hurtling 25 feet to the surface of a field. Although no injuries were reported, water flooded strawberry fields.

The pipeline, built in 1981 by the Municipal Water District of Orange County, carries treated water from the Colorado River and Northern California on a 26-mile run through Orange County.

The county typically has an emergency water supply stored in the event of a disaster, such as an earthquake.

Within hours of the break, officials began asking for volunteer water rationing. Television and radio stations continually broadcast conservation tips.

"If we stretch, we have seven to 10 days of water," Seymour said. "That's if everybody does their part."

The shortage was already beginning to cause a deluge of problems.

At the Toll Brothers construction site in Rancho Santa Margarita, work on $600,000 to $1 million homes was slowed because of lack of water. Employee restrooms also were closed.

"We're going to have to bring small amounts of water in for some things and just wait on the bigger projects," said project manager Craig Mazzara.

In Mission Viejo, Nyquita Wilson tried figure out how she was going to do laundry while home on winter break from classes at Louisiana State University.

"I'm only here for two weeks and I brought a limited amount of clothing," she said. "I have to have clean clothing. ... Maybe I'll have them all dry cleaned."

Dry Cleaner owner Jerry Beasley was considering shifting employees from his laundry business across town to his dry cleaning business if people followed Miss Wilson's example.

Business at Las Flores Hand Car Wash slowed even though the water is recycled.

"We're going to put a sign out letting people know we recycle water and they can still get their car washed," said store manager Johnny Orellane. "I know it sounds strange - wash your car, but don't water your lawn."

----------------------------------------------------------------------

-- Linkmeister (link@librarian.edu), December 14, 1999.


See thread...

Orange County CA faces water rationing after line ruptures

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id= 0020MZ



-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), December 14, 1999.


4.5 million people or .8 million? There are at most 3 million total in all of Orange County. Fortunately the break appears to be in the more sparsely populated southern part of the county.

-- Slobby Don (slobbydon@hotmail.com), December 14, 1999.

This is deep kimshi for a lot of reasons:

I recall a post about 7 weeks ago whereby restaurants MUST close under health laws if there are no working restrooms for employees to wash, etc.Can you spell "UNEMPLOYMENT"?

A few more "convenient" major calamities like this, and Komrade Krinton will have all he deems necessary to declare martial law, due to renegade militias, blah, blah, blah...

I can see his finger now, just inches from the Panic button, twitching, ready for an excuse.

Hey, wait a minute. Upon closer inspection, that's Hitlary's finger.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), December 14, 1999.



"The pipe was carrying 3.2 million gallons per hour when it's flow spiked to 4.5 million gallons, revealing the problem."

www.ocregister.com/community/water014w.shtml

-- Mark (markmic@kynd.net), December 14, 1999.


Just another fine example of why we should be prepared...Y2K or not!

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), December 14, 1999.

What would make that kind of spike occur. With all the monitoring that must go on, shouldn't an alarm have sounded warning about excessive pressure in the line?

-- Carl (no3daystorm@hotmail.com), December 15, 1999.

The more I think about this story, the worse it sounds. timing is terrible. Right when everybody wants to stockpile a little bottled water 3 million people start consuming it. Right when every major organization, families, etc. are dotting I's and crossing T's on their preps, they are thrown into an unexpected (premature) mess. If this story unfolds in the press, it could fan some serious flames. (Yes, not all flames reside just on this forum.)

-- Dave (aaa@aaa.com), December 15, 1999.

Interesting. I'm at work in Irvine, which is south Orange County's biggest town. Nothing unusual with water here. I stopped to get gas (etc) in Mission Viejo last night -- no problem flushing or washing hands there either.

Not sure where their info is coming from....

-- TA (sea_spur@yahoo.com), December 15, 1999.



TA -

Ditto. I live in San Diego county and have many contacts and family up in OC. They're coping fine. Not even as serious as the drought-related cutbacks we had a few years back.

Now, if it were to continue for, say, a month, then they'd start feeling it. Duration obviously has a major effect on impact of loss of services.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), December 15, 1999.


Look for a sudden epidemic of GI-ness in SoCal. But it may be for naught. This will deplete the resevoirs which this line feeds with water from the Colorado River Aqueduct system.

The comments from the MWD spokesman is telling. They had a seven day supply of aqueduct-supplied water on-hand. If they stretch things they can make it ten days. But that was before this line break.

Now these folks are going to go into Y2K with EMPTY resevoirs. And even if the resevoirs were full, they would only last seven to ten days, not the thirty day reserve the system was originally built with. The thirty day figure shrank as the population grew but no additional resevoirs capacity was added.

Y2K-related power failures might cut-off the water flow from the Colorado and SoCal would have had some time to fix things before the situation gets critical. Now if they manage to get the pipe repaired, if the flow from the Colorado is cut the water crisis is immediately at hand.

What's scary is that there seems to be no possible work-around. The three aqueducts feeding SoCal, the Colorado River, the California and the Los Angeles DO NOT interconnect. There seems to be no way to lend support between service areas in events like this one.

I wonder how the SoCal PTB are going to handle this one? Y2K might see a real water war between service areas in a relatively short time.

IMHO, if I was still in SoCal these days I'd be packing my bags right now. And I'd be on my way to the Tehachapis this weekend.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), December 15, 1999.


Aw WW,

I was hopin' to get a better night's sleep tonight, dude.

{Thanks much for the report from the trenches the other day, be well}

-- flora (***@__._), December 15, 1999.


Weasel -

Thanks for the input, but no can do, bro. My very elderly granma can't be relo'd without endangering her health even more, so we're here for the duration. Not an easy decision, but life's like that sometimes.

-- Mac (sneak@lurk.com), December 15, 1999.


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