Massive sewer line collapses in Wyoming

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-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 15, 2000

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[Fair Use: For Education and Research Purpose Only]

Massive sewer line collapses in Wyoming

By Fred Ney Citizens' Voice Staff Writer

A 5-foot diameter sewer line break in Wyoming Borough Monday morning caused a massive cave-in that swallowed half of Susquehanna Avenue at Ninth Street, a section of the nearby river bank as well as a 1984 Oldsmobile sedan.

Larry Selenski, Wyoming Borough's street commissioner, was en route to another section of town about 8 a.m. to supervise catch basin maintenance and had just passed over Susquehanna Avenue at the site of the cave-in when the hole opened up.

"Thirty seconds earlier and I would have been swallowed up," he noted with relief.

Fortunately, no one was injured.

Selenski said crews from the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority were on the scene quickly to assess the situation.

A short time later, crews and heavy equipment from Linde Construction Company were summoned to the scene by WVSA to begin repair work.

The hole measured more than 30 feet deep and about 30 feet in diameter.

The vehicle consumed by the cave-in is owned by Ted Polk of Susquehanna Avenue.

Selenski said the cave-in also affected two utility poles.

"The earth beneath the poles fell into the hole, and the poles were dangling, causing the wires to be stretched. However, the wires did not break, and no one lost utility service," Selenski reported.

The street commissioner said Linde employees told him they would remain at the scene until the sewer pipe was repaired and the hole was back-filled and compacted.

Work continued into the night with crews working under lights.

Traffic on Susquehanna River and Ninth Street was detoured around the construction work. He added that an extension of the police clerk grant is being filed this week.

Councilman Steve Nalewajko reported that newspaper recycling would be picked up Friday, March 3, while commingled recycling will be picked up Friday, March 17.

Councilman Joseph Scrobola said the bus shelter at Wyoming Avenue and Swetland Lane will be removed because of a safety concern over the sight distance for motorists on Swetland Lane trying to turn onto Wyoming Avenue.

Council Chairman Clem Zekoski was named as administrator of the police pension plan.

A resolution to send two police officers to training school to learn the operation of a sophisticated thermal imaging camera for undercover surveillance and rescue work was tabled for further study.

Councilman Nalewajko questioned the need to send two officers to the training school that will last about a week. He expressed concern about costs and covering shifts while the officers are away. He indicated he might favor sending one officer, but he was troubled about sending two.

Council decided to convene a special meeting Thursday to decide the issue.

Council voted to name Jack Varaly as its designated representative for the CVS pharmacy reconstruction project at the Midway Shopping Center, which was devastated by a fire weeks ago.

-snip-

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 15, 2000.

For the record, the event occurred in Wyoming borough in Wilkes- Barre, PA, and the link is to a local newspaper.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 15, 2000.

In looking at the picture in the article, I think I see their problem: It looks like someone tried to flush away their television set.

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), February 15, 2000.

Hey Butt Nuggett! That wasn't your '84 (oops, I mean 1984) Olds was it? Quick, get the gas out of it!

Jimmy

-- Jimmy Splinters (inthe@dark.com), February 15, 2000.

LOLOL I'm Here!

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 15, 2000.

That makes about a half dozen pipeline failures in the Scanton/Wilkes- Barre in the last two months. And that doesn't count the Colonial (oil) Pipeline pumping station failure last month.

That's an awful lot of water main failures for one locale. It isn't like it's someplace down south during an extended cold snap causes frost heaving. This is a place where the pipes are buried deep for that reason.

And today's TV news reports add the fact that there was a burst 8" water main near the broken sewer line. And the DPW supervisor at the site stated that the water main break precipitated the sewer line break.

An awful lot of circumstantial occurences of water main breaks in the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys this years.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), February 15, 2000.

Curiosity is really getting the best of me.

Does anyone think this Wyoming sewer line problem is y2k related, and if so, what is the technical basis for this problems relationship to y2k?

-- H. Schmidtlapp (hpsl79@hotmail.com), February 15, 2000.

I can't imagine a Y2K connect. These things take time ... decades ... to develop to the point of collapse.

Sewer collapses like this are not uncommon, least not here in the UK where the sewer systems are commonly over a hundred years old and brick-lined rather than concrete. The cause is inadequate maintenance or non-maintenance.

What happens is that if the wall of the sewer is breached, water starts eroding the ground outside the sewer. Gradually, the ebb end flow of water in and out of the sewer pipe creates a cavity in the ground, which gets bigger and bigger and bigger ... until it collapses.

It's not always easy to spot the problem developing. The breach in the sewer wall may be beneath the level of the effluent in the sewer, and it doesn't have to be large. There's also a common problem that over many decades, the maps which showed where the Victorians built their sewers have been mislaid ... so sometimes the first that anyone knows of even a major sewer pipe is when it collapses.

I read an article once that said that in Manchester they measure sewer collapses in DDBs, where a DDB is a double-decker-bus (or rather, a collapse that could swallow one). This report sounds like quite a lot of DDBs.

-- Nigel (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), February 16, 2000.