A broken main line that disrupted water service in Gadsden and some surrounding areas on July 8 was bad enough, but officials say it was minutes away from being disastrous.
The people who kept that from happening — labeled heroes by all concerned — were in the spotlight at the July 16 Gadsden City Council meeting.
Workers from the Gadsden Water Works and Sewer Board, who first located and then isolated and repaired the leak, were present to receive kudos from Mayor Craig Ford, board General Manager Chad Hare and council members.
And Hare, in reviewing exactly what happened during a two-day period that he described as “challenging, to say the least,” presented a chilling picture of what might have been.
He said about 2:30 a.m. on July 8, there was a “catastrophic main failure” in a 20-inch cast-iron pipe located between North Fifth and Sixth streets, behind Etowah County's Willie F. Brown Sr. Engineering and Fleet Maintenance Facility.
That pipe, he said, “feeds a 5 million gallon tank off Noccalula Road that is the pressure source for the City of Gadsden, and also supplies the vast majority of tanks in our system.”
Computer records show that in less than an hour, a 1 million gallon tank in North Gadsden was completely drained, and by 5:40 a.m., the 5 million gallon tank was empty.
“That left a 3 million gallon tank up on the mountain controlling what we had left in the system,” Hare said, which doesn't just include Gadsden, but areas such as North Etowah County and Whorton Bend that purchase water from Gadsden.
Hare called a retired board employee, Joel Smith, who along with current employee Billy Roberts located the leak between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m.
That's when the board's crews “stepped in and showed out,” he said, working to isolate the leak and cap it off with valves on either side “to keep pressure in the system.”
Crews got that done by 1 p.m. and Hare said the impact was pretty much immediate — and just in time. “We were about 45 minutes from the 3 million gallon tank being emptied,” he said.
Hare sent the workers home afterward, realizing that they were “going to have another big day the next day in brutal heat conditions,” and had other staffers gathering up materials. (Water systems in Anniston and Athens provided assistance there.)
The crews returned to work at 6 a.m. on July 9, and did an exceptional job repairing the leak, according to Hare. “By 1 in the afternoon we were back filling the trench,” he said.
“I apologize to the customers we have,” he said. “I'd love to say something like that will never happen again, but when I say we were close to a catastrophic event, we were.”
Present along with Roberts and Smith at the July 16 council meeting were Marcus Baker, Brandon Booker, David Bowen, Ben Brown, Jeffrey Corbin, Dewayne Fox, Tommie Goggans, Brett Jackson, Jeff Kiley, Matt Ledbetter, Jason McKiven, Donnie Minton, Logan Saylor, David Watson, Jared Wiford and Brady Williams.
Hare also mentioned the board's office staff, calling the response to the crisis “a true team effort.”
He thanked Ford and the council for their invitation to the meeting and “every bit of support they gave us.”
The mayor recalled going out to the leak site “and acting like I wanted to help until I started sweating, and y'all were down there about to die and I saw Gatorade and Coke and water flying everywhere, and figured I was in the way” as crews battled both the leak and the heat.
He said he appreciated the workers and that their efforts didn't go unnoticed, adding, “You don't know how important water is until you don't have it.”
Council President Kent Back, who serves on the water board, praised their hard work and dedication, and said with their typical unity, “They literally saved the day.”
City crews also stepped into action during the crisis, bringing bottled water to the Colley Homes housing community adjacent to the leak, setting up a cooling center at the nearby Carver Community Center and mobilizing the Gadsden Fire Department to pump water provided by the Ball Play, Glencoe and Tidmore Bend departments to ensure hospitals and other medical facilities could function and have air conditioning.
The city also provided lunch for the water board's workers. (The board is a separate entity from the city.)
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