Well, it wasn’t quite midnight. It was around 10.30 p.m. when I heard noises that sounded like construction trucks somewhere in our neighborhood. Curious, I went out to investigate. A man was putting out a couple of traffic cones on Christopher Drive, and I asked him what was going on. “Broken water main,” he said.
Near where Christopher meets Crestmont, a huge light stood on the sidewalk, a van was parked near the middle of the road, and an excavator was grabbing dirt from a hole in the road and pouring it into a dump truck. A team of six men and a woman from SFWD were at work. They’d been there earlier, he said, but they had to go to another job and finish that first. “We could be here all night. It’s hard to say.” I took some photographs, staying out of the way. They were amused, but friendly when I explained it was for the neighborhood blog. I’ve written about a broken water main before, also in winter. This looked to be even bigger than that one.
“We thought we’d found the leak,” one of the men said, “But now it looks like it’s further down the road.” The excavator extended the trench, the teeth biting into the asphalt. The hole was brimming with brown muddy water. They connected a pump to a hose, and started pumping it out in a brown gush of water that streamed down the slope. As the level fell, we could see where the leak was roiling the surface at the furthest end of the trench.
They moved the excavator over, edging carefully between the hole and a parked car, and dug some more. Soon they had the leak exposed.
As the water drained, the leak turned into a fountain, rising maybe 20 feet into the air. I could see the crack in the pipe. Now all they had to do was to put a collar on it.
Easier said than done, of course. One man put on a raincoat and gumboots and climbed into the hole, digging around to free the pipe. Soon, three of them were trying to clear the space round the pipe and position the collar over a crack that was gushing a 20-foot fountain under pressure.
I left around 11.30 p.m., and they were hard at work. Around 2 a.m., I stepped outside, and heard some banging and rattling. I hoped they were packing up to leave.
THANK YOU, SFWD WORKERS!
Thank you to the team for being out there mucking around in muddy water on a cold winter night when most of us are asleep, keeping our water system working.
And thank you, all the workers who provide and maintain the services that are part of civilization: running water, power, clean streets, garbage pick-up, communications, safety, emergency services, fire fighting.
Happy New Year, All!
FOREST KNOLLS NEIGHBORHOOD 