It’s been no day at the beach as frozen pipes plague Galveston
City issues water conservation advisory as plumbers work to keep up with demand
GALVESTON — Sitting at a table inside his gift shop on Seawall Boulevard, Mony Hamo gestured toward the full racks of T-shirts, swimwear and other beach accessories, lamenting the half-million-dollar inventory that hadn’t budged for three days because of a broken pipe.
“In the summer we don’t care; money’s coming in good,” Hamo said from his shop, Dolphin World. “Now every penny counts. We’ve got employees, and we can’t send them home. They have families; we have to take care of them.”
Hamo is one of thousands of Galveston business owners and residents who were still dealing on Friday with frozen and burst pipes after a midweek stretch of freezing weather, with the island remaining under a water conservation advisory through the weekend.
As temperatures in Galveston dropped well below freezing on Tuesday, a customer at Dolphin World noticed that water had leaked all over the restroom. With whole swaths of the island dealing with pipe and water issues, Hamo’s plumber could not get there to fix his pipes for at least two days, forcing him to close shop.
An Israeli immigrant, Hamo moved to Galveston 30 years ago in part because its balmy climate is similar to that of his home country. He was not pleased with the intermittent stretches of unusually frigid weather that has plagued southeast Texas in re-
cent weeks.
“It’s terrible,” Hamo said. “I don’t remember in my whole life cold weather like this. My mother called me and said, ‘Make sure you put on good clothes from Israel.’ ”
City Manager Brian Maxwell said Galveston had received 4,000 to 5,000 calls as of Friday morning, for problems ranging from frozen or broken pipes to water leaks. The city issued a water conservation advisory on Thursday after its water tanks dropped to below 60 percent capacity.
As of late Friday, the tanks were back at 90 percent, but the city will keep the water conservation notice in effect as a precautionary measure.
“We probably need to hold on to [the advisory] until we get 100 percent full grasp on it,” Maxwell said. “Even though our tanks are filling up, [the city is] still drawing a tremendous amount of water from Gulf Coast Water Authority, so even though I’m keeping up with demand, my demand is still artificially high.”
City public works staffers have been working around the clock but are well beyond the capacity to deal with the magnitude of water issues across the island. Nearby cities, including Dickinson and League City, have provided staffing help. Galveston has emergency contractors working over the weekend to repair several water main breaks.
A combination of factors contributed to the water crisis in Galveston, including aging pipes, residents leaving water running to avoid pipe freezes, and a cruise ship that docked on the island on Thursday and drew down some of the city’s water supply.
Maxwell said he hadn’t seen a freeze of this scale on the island in 35 years, the difference now being that many of the homes on the island are vacant second homes or vacation rentals, where homeowners may not be aware of a piping issue.
Still, he was encouraged by the all-hands-on-deck approach of plumbers across the region aiding residents, noting that several Houston-area plumbers were also lending a hand.
“It’s a great time to be a plumber,” Maxwell said.
Plumbers on the island were stunned at the sheer volume of calls they had received.
Terry Fisher, the owner of Quality Plumbing, which is based in Galveston, said that the magnitude and range of issues he dealt with was “worse than Ike,” the 2008 hurricane that devastated the island.
“All day until 8:30 last night I was on my phone,” Fisher said Friday. “My men are running ragged, they ran until 8 at night. We had stuff that froze that’s never frozen ever on the island.”
It was one of Fisher’s plumbers, Ronnie Holt, who finally got Hamo’s pipe fixed late on Friday. Holt pointed to a small exposed backflow pipe on an outer wall of Dolphin World that was causing the problem. Holt said that most pipes like this one on the island were vulnerable, even with proper insulation.
“Insulation when you have a hard freeze doesn’t do you much good,” he said.
Hamo, meanwhile, was thankful that Holt allowed him to reopen, even for only a few hours on Friday, perhaps enough time to make a few sales. He said he hoped that this was the last spate of cold weather the island would endure. The good news; Temperatures were expected to top 70 on Saturday.
“Every time a cold front is coming in, it’s a front with big teeth,” Hamo said. “I’m hoping for a good week.”