Calgary's inconsistent weather continues to cause water main breaks
If Sangeetha Ravindran and her twin eight-year-old daughters get thirsty, they have to make a trip to the water truck outside their Parkdale home, instead of heading to the kitchen.
"Since Wednesday night, we've had no water," said Ravindran. "So Thursday, we got this water wagon. It's okay. At least we have water to drink."
Thirty homes in the northwest community have been without running water since a water main burst earlier this week.
It's one of 11 water main bursts across Calgary in the last 48 hours.
"Everything is a problem right now," Ravindran said. "Cooking, we have not had a shower, toilets are not flushing… so all the basic things."
The City of Calgary says roughly 200 homes, along with many businesses, are affected by all the water main breaks.
Officials say a cycle of freezing and then warming temperatures is to blame.
Martin Haefcke, an instructor in SAIT's pipe trades program, says Calgary's older neighbourhoods tend to suffer more in these situations.
"As people drive on streets, and the longer an area has been there, the frost gets deeper, because the ground gets more compact," Haefcke said. "So frost gets down to areas that it didn't usually... Sometimes that just happens. Sometimes it's just age. (It's) a pretty common issue to some parts that are quite old now, that wear and tear."
The city says it usually can fix water main breaks with two days, but crews are swamped right now so they may have to hire external contractors to help get the job done.
Meanwhile, the Ravindrans hope they soon won't need to make any more trips to the water truck.
"(The city) says they'll fix it within 48 hours," Sangeetha said on Friday.. "By the end of tonight, it will be 48, so we are hoping it's be done and restored."
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Online diary: Buffalo gunman plotted attack for months
The white gunman accused of massacring 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket wrote as far back as November about staging a livestreamed attack on African Americans.

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre denounces 'white replacement theory'
Pierre Poilievre is denouncing the 'white replacement theory' believed to be a motive for a mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., as 'ugly and disgusting hate-mongering.'
Ontario driver who killed woman and three daughters sentenced to 17 years in prison
A driver who struck and killed a woman and her three young daughters nearly two years ago 'gambled with other people's lives' when he took the wheel, an Ontario judge said Monday in sentencing him to 17 years behind bars.
What we know so far about the victims of the Buffalo mass shooting
A former police officer, the 86-year-old mother of Buffalo's former fire commissioner, and a grandmother who fed the needy for decades were among those killed in a racist attack by a gunman on Saturday in a Buffalo grocery store. Three people were also wounded.
Ontario party leaders face off during 2022 election debate
The leaders of Ontario's four major political parties took the stage for a live televised debate in Toronto on Monday night.
Documents show a pattern of human rights abuses against gender diverse prisoners
Facing daily instances of violence and abuse, gender diverse people in the Canadian prison system say they are forced to take measures into their own hands to secure their safety.
White 'replacement theory' fuels racist attacks
A racist ideology seeping from the internet's fringes into the mainstream is being investigated as a motivating factor in the supermarket shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York. Most of the victims were Black.
Amber Heard says she feared she would not survive Johnny Depp marriage
'Aquaman' actor Amber Heard told jurors in a defamation case on Monday that she filed for divorce from Johnny Depp in 2016 because she worried she would not survive physical abuse by him.
Kenney visits Washington, pushing stronger energy ties between Alberta and U.S.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney begins his two-day blitz in Washington today, hoping to convince U.S. lawmakers his province is best positioned to strengthen North American energy security.