Bursting pipes, boil notices add to city’s misery
Millions of Houstonians awoke Wednesday to a notice from the city that their water was unsafe to drink unless boiled, an impossible task for many residents who continued to suffer power outages from the winter storm.
A large chunk of Houston households had already lost water pressure altogether or had seen their pipes freeze, preventing access to the city’s water system. The crisis extended to key facilities, depriving hospitals and the Harris County Jail of running water. Houston Methodist canceled most non-urgent surgeries and procedures due to the water shortage and may do so again Thursday, a spokeswoman said.
Houston officials predicted water pressure will return to operational levels by the end of the day
Thursday, though the boil water notice will extend longer, as state law requires cities to continue testing water samples for 24 hours before the notice can be lifted.
The plummeting water pressure was the result of bursting pipes across the city and equipment failures at water distribution facilities due to frigid weather conditions, said Carol Haddock, director of Houston Public Works. Under the boil water notice, residents are advised to use only boiled or bottled water for drinking, cooking and brushing teeth. City officials said residents can safely shower as long as they avoid ingesting any water.
The water shortages caught many Houstonians off guard, even those who had tried to prepare for the winter storm.
Caralena Morales took several precautions ahead of Wednesday’s outages, finding candles and flashlights, stocking food, filling a bath tub with water for flushing toilets. The family, however, did not plan on losing running water. As a result, Morales and her 19-year-old son, Esteban, spent 45 minutes waiting in line Wednesday morning outside a Spring Branch H-E-B to buy four cases of water.
Morales, 35, said she mostly blamed herself for the oversight, though she questioned why her home lacked water when her pipes did not freeze.
“We went from water to no water to a trickle to no water,” Morales, 35, said, sighing when she learned the city issued a boil advisory Wednesday morning. “How does that happen? We knew it was going to be this cold.”
Virtually the entire Houston area came under some form of the water crisis, with surrounding municipalities also issuing boil water notices to residents who largely lacked water access. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said county residents should assume they need to boil water “unless they’ve heard otherwise.”
Frigid temperatures prevented backup generators across Houston’s water system from kicking on during the power outage, a crucial problem in a city that relies on pumps rather than water towers to generate pressure. Treatment plants also were running below capacity in part because the chemicals used to purify the water were not behaving normally, Haddock said.
Beginning around lunchtime Tuesday, pressure in much of the city dipped below 20 pounds per square inch, the threshold below which the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requires that a boil notice be issued, as low pressure increases the risk that contaminants can force their way into the pipes.
“By yesterday evening, it became apparent to us that we were not going to be able to recover those pressures, and that is why we issued the boil water notice this morning,” Haddock said.
Temperatures rose above freezing Wednesday and Haddock said crews began returning to service pumps that had been taken offline for maintenance scheduled during the typically low-demand winter months.
In Galveston, officials shut off the city’s water supply and issued a boil water notice Wednesday morning after burst pipes and major water line breaks from the storm strained the city’s water supply. The city’s main water supplier, the Gulf Coast Water Authority, separately lost massive amounts of water due to bursting pipes, reducing flow to the island and causing demand to exceed supply.
Baytown officials brought the city’s water plant back online and began filling its storage tanks Wednesday afternoon, the city announced in a news release. Some residents were expected to begin seeing a gradual increase in water pressure by early evening, but it will likely take a few days for the system to return to normal, according to the city.
Water issues also disrupted school districts around the Houston area, including Cy-Fair ISD, where officials said several schools have “major” water damage and about a dozen campuses lost all food in their buildings. Officials from Klein ISD, which joined Houston and Katy ISDs in announcing class cancellations through the end of the week, cited “weather-related challenges including damages to school buildings.”
Some hospitals, meanwhile, were dealing with low water pressure but had seen minimal interruptions to normal business. Facilities with water issues included Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center campus and Texas Children’s Hospital’s campuses at the Medical Center and in west Houston.
A more dire situation unfolded as pipes burst at Houston Methodist hospitals across the area and two locations — Baytown and west Houston — were operating without water altogether. Those two hospitals still were “managing to meet essential needs of the community,” a spokeswoman said.
City officials were working to provide water to various hospitals across the area. The Houston Fire Department sent water to Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, and the city dipped into its water supply for irrigating parks to provide water to other hospitals.
Mayor Sylvester Turner, who said a pipe had burst in his own home, also asked grocery store chains to send water to hospitals if they can.
“We’re all working together, just like we’ve done before, pulling resources from wherever they exist, and then sharing those resources,” Turner said.