City officials say pipe likely broke due to age

The sun was shining bright Tuesday, but residents of one north Boulder neighborhood still found themselves spending most of the day in the dark, damp and dirt.

Homeowners on Norwood and Oak avenues began what could be a long and expensive cleanup process after city officials say old piping led to a water main break on Monday evening that flooded about 20 homes before it could be shut off.

The water-main break was first reported at 4:45 p.m. at Norwood Avenue and Cress Court, and water flooded homes near Norwood and Cress before cascading toward Oak Avenue as residents scrambled to set up makeshift berms.

James Cassidy, of Colorado Disaster Renovation, collects damaged items Tuesday in the basement of a home on Oak Avenue that was flooded after a water main broke in north Boulder. (Cliff Grassmick / Staff Photographer)

"Even sandbags couldn't stop it, it was just so much water," said Andrew Stanger, who lives on Oak Avenue. "I tried to block it as best I could. But within minutes it was just devastating. It was like a dam broke."

The city was able to get the water shut off after about 45 minutes, and crews worked through the night to re-open roads and restore water service in the neighborhood by Tuesday morning.

But some residents are questioning why it took 45 minutes to shut off water as basements in the area began to flood.

"That's why my whole basement is destroyed," said Meredith Kurry, who also lives on Oak Avenue. "If they had gotten here in a timely fashion it might not have been as bad."

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Contrary to reports from police Monday night, Boulder Public Works spokesman Ben Irwin said the response time was not longer because the pipe was maintained by the Betasso Treament Plant.

"There is a person on call for these water-main breaks," Irwin said. "There is no special team dedicated to one kind of water-main break."

But Irwin said depending on where the worker is at the time of the call, it can take about an hour to get the water shut off after a main break.

"The person who is on call needs to travel to the site, then needs to locate the valve and shut off the water," Irwin said. "That is a process, so certainly 45 minutes didn't surprise me."

As for the cause of the break, Irwin said officials believe the age of pipe — which records show was installed in the 1960s — was the main culprit.

"It was likely the age of the pipe and a crack or something caused it to break," said Irwin, who added that with 470 miles of piping throughout the city, breaks due to age are not uncommon.

"This looked typical in terms of it being an older pipe," Irwin said. "We have about 60 a year on average."

Irwin said that, at this point, the city has not made any decision about whether it needs to inspect other pipes in the area. But he noted that the neighborhood has not seen a lot of pipe breaks.

"There are a lot of things that factor into those decisions," Irwin said.

In the meantime, residents are now left to start the process of cleaning up their properties.

The streets in the area were lined Tuesday with all sorts of cleaning trucks and disaster response crews, some of which had been on scene since Monday.

Stanger said the basement where he lives had about 3 feet of water in it, so he attempted to sleep while fans were going through the night to try to dry out the room.

"I got about four hours of sleep, but I didn't really have anywhere else to go," Stanger said.

Stanger took the day off of work, and, as he dumped debris from the waters into a bin Tuesday morning, he anticipated it wouldn't be the last time.

"It'll probably be weeks," Stanger said. "You can't prepare for this, you just do the best you can."

Kurry said she had just put the finishing touches on her basement three weeks earlier — repairs from the 2013 flood — when disaster struck again.

"We had finally saved up some money and then this happened," Kurry said. "The nightmare is now we have to pay for this."

Boulder's Irwin said it's to early for the city to know if and how much it will help residents pay for the damage. He said city officials will first need to finish their investigation into the nature of the pipe break before they can begin to look at claims.

"It's an ongoing process, and I'm not sure how long the process will take," Irwin said.

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