CALGARY -- City of Calgary’s roads and water crews continue to clean up after a water main break on 17th Avenue S.W.
The cold snap caused the pipe to burst, sending water gushing onto the road before it turned into ice.
Eighteen homes and a church in the area are impacted and an emergency water supply truck has been brought in.
“Our crews are quite good at repairing under any conditions. They do work under these cold situations, but it’s not easy work,” said city spokesperson Chris Huston.
The eastbound lanes of 17th Avenue — from Richmond Road to 18th Street S.W. — continue to be impacted by the road work. Crews started digging Tuesday morning, but were unable to find the break initially.
That, along with the extremely cold conditions, is causing the repair to take longer than first expected.
“(There’s) quite a bit of frost to get to the pipe. The frost is about 1.5 metres to 2 metres this time of year,” Huston said, adding crews deal with about 300 water main breaks in Calgary every year.
City crews have responded to at least 30 frozen water lines and burst pipes since the weekend.
The deep freeze is also leading to long wait-times for drivers in need of a tow truck or a battery boost. AMA says wait times for a boost in Calgary are about 24 hours and the high call volume is happening right across the province.
“Just yesterday alone, 14,000 calls were received by our roadside team,” said Jeff Kasbrick with AMA.
“That represents about eight times our volume. At some points, we were taking about 500 calls every half hour.”
