Homes flooded after water main breaks
Second such incident in nine months leaves homeowners frustrated
While perhaps not dreaming of a white one, most folks in Metro Vancouver are resigned to expect a wet Christmas — just not this wet.
A water main in Burnaby burst shortly after midnight on Thursday morning, the second to do so in the neighbourhood in nine months, flooding nearby homes and washing rocks, gravel and sludge downhill.
The slurry ruined at least one homeowner’s fence.
“I want the city to do something,” said Mandy Yeh, who lives at the corner of Manor Street and Gilmore Avenue, two houses below where the main burst on Dominion Street.
She and her husband woke up around 2 a.m. to six inches of water on the ground floor.
“My husband said, ‘Oh no, water is covering the whole house.’ We opened the door and the water was high like that,” she said as she held her hand about a foot off the ground.
“When we opened the door, all the water came into the house and we couldn’t close the door (again).”
The fire department showed up, but had to wait until a city crew arrived to turn off the water, which reportedly took about an hour.
Yeh hadn’t had a chance to evaluate the damage, but she said the floors and furniture were all ruined by water. She spent the rest of the night cleaning up, she said.
She runs a daycare for eight children, and her backyard, where they play outdoors, is a swamp and partially covered in debris from the flood.
“And the fence is broken,” she said, pointing to where rocks and mud had flowed downhill.
Yeh had to cancel daycare on Thursday and today, and isn’t sure when she can take in the kids again, leaving parents to scramble for care.
It is the fourth such flood in the 10 years she and her husband have lived in the house, she said.
“So, it’s a big problem for this community.”
Thursday’s was the third such main rupture in Metro Vancouver in two days: On Tuesday, some homes in Surrey were flooded, and on Wednesday a water main installed in 1920 burst at Georgia and Hornby, and construction to replace it will begin on Jan. 6, with a projected completion date sometime in April.
A city spokesman said Burnaby has one of the most aggressive water-main replacement programs in Canada, replacing about two per cent of the city’s roughly 700 kilometres of water mains a year.
“We are sorry to hear that several residents’ homes were flooded overnight due to a water main break near Gilmore Avenue and Dominion Street,” Chris Bryan said. “Once we learned of the break, water was shut off in this area as quickly as possible.”
The water mains in that area were installed in the mid-1950s, he added, and after the March incident the city began design work for accelerated replacement of that section.
The work will be completed in the new year, Bryan said.