DETROIT – Residents across Metro Detroit are facing severe challenges due to icy conditions caused by broken water mains.
Background: Detroit residents struggle with ice following water main break
A water main break on Detroit’s west side trapped residents for several days as the water turned the street into ice.
While the neighborhood looks better, the residents have been left without water as repairs are being made.
The past two days have been nothing but a chilling and freezing nightmare for residents like Vince Palmer, living next to the water main break near Vaughan and Constance streets.
“This is normal. Whenever it rains, we flood and it takes days to drain, but when it’s cold like this, this is something else to deal with,” Palmer said. “I’ve seen my neighbors come out to get as far as right to the corner of their driveway and be stuck and have to fight and get pushed and dig just to get back in their driveway to be stuck.”
Same goes for Jamel Stokes, who can’t even get out of his driveway to earn a living.
“I missed work yesterday because I couldn’t get out,” Stokes said. “They had all their machines out here.”
Some people have resorted to driving on sidewalks and lawns to make it to a drier area.
Unfortunately, other drivers haven’t been so lucky, leading to a constant back-and-forth battle to get to better ground.
“That’s what you gotta do. That’s the sad part because you can’t get around it,” Palmer said. “It’s not like you just get out the car and leave it and wait for some better weather, he gotta get it out now.”
Brian Peckinpaugh with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department said crews have been tackling the issue ever since the water main broke on Sunday, but there are many challenges -- especially with getting all the water out so pipes could be repaired.
“We have moved all our crews from different areas of the organization to focus on water main breaks. We currently have eight crews this morning working,” Peckinpaugh said. “We would normally have our big vacuum trucks out here called vectors, but the temperature is so low that the equipment will actually freeze in this weather.”
Crews had some challenges with getting the job done, but at least water has been restored for some of the people living in their homes as the city works to take care of the mess.
Palmer has been helping neighbors out as much as he can to safely get out of the neighborhood, including a mother of three.
“I had to drive on the sidewalk, maneuver against a tree and garbage can,” Palmer said. “But she got out so she and her kids can do what they have to do.”
We’re told people in the area have been dealing with water main issues for quite some time, but is it a weather issue or aging infrastructure?
“Whenever there’s a drastic change in temperature -- whether a heatwave or cold frigid weather like we’re experiencing in the last few days -- it puts pressures on the pipe and that puts pressure on the pipe and they tend to break,” Peckinpaugh said.
Yet for some, it seems like a never-ending issue.
“They say they’ve been working around the clock to fix it since like forever,” said Stokes. “So, I guess the clock is a very long clock cause it’s still not fixed.”