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66-Inch Water main burst in Washington DC!
Unjust_Dream
Member Posts: 4
Today the Main water main had burst in Montgomery County.
(December 23rd, 2008) Tuesday.
Check out my suggestion for this site if you wish at this link: www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/216618
There was a 4-5 foot wall of water hurling down River Road. (Talk about a Pun, but out of all seriousness.)
Members could not locate where the valves cut-off was for quite a while, and later figured it was under the few feet of freezing cold water.
They had to later figure out where to shut it off.
-Nice to know people knew where everything was.
Authorities have had to rescue multiple pedestrians from their vehicles.
Great to know how everyone knows where all the shut-off valves for our water sources are.
-Whose job is it to know where valves are?
-What are they being paid to do?
Yes, the pipe busting was No ones fault, but this incident could have ended more abruptly than it had.
They still do not know the timetable for when the water will be shut off.
(This pipe was built in 1924 if I am correct.)
Comments
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2005/04/12/VI2005041201139.html
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
If it was a city water main, then the city should know where it is located and where the isolation valves are for that stretch of pipe.
66" is what... 5.5 feet in diameter? That's around around 17 square feet in area. Yeah, you could get a lot of water though that really fast. I'm surprised they don't have some sort of automatic cut-off system that activates when pressure drops in the system, but I've never looked very closely at city water systems to know if that's a common feature in major water lines.
In short, I'd guess the D.C. water department has responsibility on dealing with this.
They have multiple cut-off valves, but I'm assuming numerous ones were under a lot of water, and others had to be located.
Remember, this pipe was built back in the early 1900's (If I am correct)
It wasn't meant to withstand all this climate I am assuming.
for the next 20-30 years... American Great Works will not be new maintaining our current infrastructure will be the only great one we do during that time. That's a highly summarized quote from an engineering magazine that I browse at the library, real engineering not PopMech or PopSci.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
To bad the politicians are on a hill...
1920s, I believe. But still, that's 80 years. So, yeah. But why didn't they upgrade their systems? If you already have a cut-off valve, then is it really that difficult to install wiring to make it remote activated? This is what happens when you spend money on glamorous crap instead of ugly-but-useful(necessary) stuff.
It's just like an earlier poster quoted: we'll soon reach the point where we'll have to spend a lot of money on maintaining/upgrading our infrastructure or else watch it decay to the point of non-usability.
1920s, I believe. But still, that's 80 years. So, yeah. But why didn't they upgrade their systems? If you already have a cut-off valve, then is it really that difficult to install wiring to make it remote activated? This is what happens when you spend money on glamorous crap instead of ugly-but-useful(necessary) stuff.
It's just like an earlier poster quoted: we'll soon reach the point where we'll have to spend a lot of money on maintaining/upgrading our infrastructure or else watch it decay to the point of non-usability.
You have an excellent point, but maybe they did not find that of utter importance, well I guess they found out otherwise.