Tuesday, February 19, 2019 ~ LANGFORD | First post at 9:20 pm, updated at 10:45 pm February 19, and at 12:30 am on February 20.
~ by Mary P Brooke, West Shore Voice News
Due to a watermain break Goldstream Avenue is closed between Peatt Road and Jacklin Road, said City of Langford Engineering at 9:20 pm this evening.
The break occurred around 8:05 pm — with water gushing out of the pipe at least 20 feet into the air, said one bystander who had called it in to 911. The first Capital Regional District (CRD) duty operator arrived on scene around 8:15 pm, says Ted Robbins, General Manager of Integrated Water Services, CRD Water.
The closed off section of Goldstream is a commercial block in central Langford, the same block where Langford City Hall is located. Strathmore Road is across the street from City Hall, with both homes and businesses.
Road conditions along Goldstream are anticipated to be back to normal for the morning commute, Wednesday February 20.
The watermain will need repair, said City of Langford Director of Engineering, Michelle Mahovlich earlier this evening. And after that, the road will require repair. By 9:30 pm crews were bringing pipes to the site, and by 10:10 pm the watermain was under repair.
Eleven homes and a condo/commercial building now have no water service. CRD says water service will be restored by morning, but with a boil water quality advisory for impacted homes in the area. The affected addresses are 866 Goldstream Avenue (The Strathmore), and these residential addresses on Strathmore: 2768, 2764, 2760, 2785, 2781, 2777, 2773, 2769, 2765.
“The boil water advisory will be removed when Island Heath is satisfied that the drinking water does not pose a health concern and issues an ‘ALL CLEAR’ notice at which time the impacted customers will be notified. During the water advisory household tap water may be disinfected by boiling it vigorously for one minute,” said CRD this evening in a news release.
About 14 residents of the area were evacuated by Langford Fire Rescue over to the Langford Legion on Station Avenue as a temporary emergency operations centre. Their premises are without now without water supply until later tomorrow.
An excavator was brought to the site to dig down to open up the site of the broken pipe.
The old distribution pipe that burst was 8-inch asbestos cement. The new distribution pipe is 8-inch PVC.
About 30 personnel were on site during the evening including Langford Fire Rescue, Westshore RCMP, Langford engineering, and CRD water repair crews.
There is extensive flooding on Strathmore Road which was immediately closed between Scathe and Goldstream. Strathmore Road will remain closed until further notice.
“Watermain breaks like this don’t happen very often,” says Robbins. “It’s an older pipe. We can’t predict when they will fail.”
Robbins says that CRD has a fully trained construction crews to deal with these sorts of scenarios. Their duty operator arrived within 10 minutes of the 911 call, and the crew arrived over the course of the hour.
Emergency support provided by the City to affected residents