water out?

anyone else have a water outage this morning for 20 minutes?

311 line was actually busy this morning. ie could not even be placed in the wait queue

okay WOW.... city wide outtage.... heh, good thing we paid all that money for the new water treatment plant.

Funny you should mention that, I turned on the tap and the pressure was so low. I went and looked outside thinking there may have been a water main break. My water is fine now.

yeah.. confirmed city wide..... problem now in my area is that the loss of pressure for a while dropped the level low enough to loosen all the dirt/rust or some such thing... no idea But I do know that running my water it comes out yellow and has dirt of some sort in it.

sooo... until the water runs clear I dont even wanna think of running my hot water or else the hot water tank will get all sorts of unhappy sediment in it.

I did not notice any problems up to about 7:30am...

Didn't notice a problem, but kind of wondered why it looked like I had a tan after showering.

grumpy old man wrote:I did not notice any problems up to about 7:30am...

yeah 740ish is when it seemed to hit

HOLY CRAP!!! can anyone tell me why we dont have huge backup diesel generators at every single water pumping station?
http://www.winnipeg.ca/cao/media/news/nr_2010/nr_20100118.stm#1


WINNIPEG - January 18, 2010 - Just after 7:30 am this morning, a widespread electric power outage caused low water pressure throughout Winnipeg.

Electric power was lost to all three water pumping stations. A gas engine was on duty at one of the pumping stations (McPhillips), but considering the electric outage occurred during peak water time, it couldn’t keep up with the demand for water.

Electric power has now been restored and the system is returning to normal.

I wondered the same thing.

Cutbacks?

It would make sense to have these in place...which is precisely why they are NOT in place!

We just don't roll that way around here!! lol

It's a scary thought that we can be without water in the event of a power outage.

The back-up system has been designed by a fcuken idiot obviously!!!

Have any of you listened to the reports coming off the news?

3 water pumps went down...2 of them were back up within 15 minutes, the third generator failed, they had to get a new generator in and that took about an hour.

An hour without water...all the poor babies out there.

How about we all move to Haiti where they've been without water for a week now? With NO HOPE of getting anything significant before Friday!

What North Americans need is a good disaster to hit...something that covers the whole continent...just to show everyone how insignificant and unimportant we all are.

Let's have a cold snap of -50C for about 5 weeks, along with about 6 feet of snow. Bury the country for awhile and see what happens. How many of you will survive it? How many could go that long without power, supplies, or...heaven forbid...the internet?

AA.. there should not have been any question as to Generators failing, or the generators not kicking in automatically and immediatley.

The generators should be properly maintained and tested. We pay very good money for a proper emergency plan and the city failed quite miserably in this small event. A much larger one and we are screwed

Oh shut up AA
I agree.

Why weren't the generators checked regularly to see if they worked.

I don't think anyone's bitching because we didn't have water for a minute, but because we were unprepared at the city engineers office.

They were on in an HOUR...not DAYS.

Equipment fails...it's normal...things break.

Why it broke is the concern...and that will be addressed.
Reliability of other generators is a concern, and they will all be tested.

But again...it's an HOUR...and that's REPLACING a generator.

It may have been something stupid simple...like a clogged line, or worn gasket. Something it would take longer to fix than to replace.

About the only thing it proved failed, is the stupid 311 system. The water goes down, the only number to call is 311 now, so anyone who actually wanted 311 for something else were screwed because they could not get through. What if I wanted to book some golf time? But I can't because the water is down...now THAT is an emergency situation!!!

not just 311, AA.... the city never updated its website or sent out a news release until 1.5 hours after the event. There was a fairly significant communication breakdown is a very insignificant event. This does not bode well for our city's ability to handle a real emergency.

"Why it broke is the concern...and that will be addressed.
Reliability of other generators is a concern, and they will all be tested."

Thats exactly what we are saying!

JTF wrote:If they were doing their fcuken job properly we wouldn't have even known about the event!!!

exactly.... well other then all the power outtages nailing the ST B people and the lights and such in that area.. but then we would have just blamed Hydro

I mean the water thing.

JTF wrote:I mean the water thing.

I know.. thats why I said exactly

I'm not going to be too quick to forgive the city for the faulty generators. There is a protocol for such things that includes monthly testing.

The lack of water could prove extremely dangerous in several instances: fire hydrants and hospitals to name two.

This is not Haiti or another third world country.

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/City-experiencing-major-power-outage-81961137.html

this statement is NOT acceptible

"The city does not plan to make any changes to its water operations, but is nonetheless reviewing the incident."

According to a spokeswoman for the City on tonights news, water pressure has to be brought back on gradually after a major loss of pressure. A sudden surge of pressure could result in ruptured mains, etc. The only thing I would be concerned about is the failure of the generator, surely they have a preventative maintenance plan to ensure that these things work. Other than that, sh1t happens.

the generators should be setup so that there is NEVER a loss of pressure to worry about and yes why exactly did a generator fail?

Not being an engineer myself (thats a hint), I'm not sure if it is viable, or even possible to have a seamless system where there would be no loss of pressure in event of a power outage.