Five Fort Worth homes damaged by massive water main break, city says

The Fort Worth Water Department says crews are making progress on repairs to a 33-inch pipe struck by an outside contractor Monday. The city says a contractor working for a telecommunications company hit the line near Trinity Boulevard and Precinct Line Road in Hurst.

The line supplies water to the city of Hurst, DFW Airport, and parts of Grand Prairie.

"The airport would probably like us to get it back and so would Grand Prairie. We asked them to stop taking from us and only use their Dallas connections until we can get this line back in service," the water department's Mary Gugliuzza said.

Gugliuzza said Fort Worth's legal and risk management departments will determine what action might be taken against the contractor. After the line was hit, she said the contractor had asked for approval to dig in the area earlier this month. Gugliuzza said the city asked the contractor to put its work on hold, but there had not been any more communication between the two.

Five homes were damaged by water. Tuesday morning, homeowners were starting to load boxes with garbage and lining them up on their curbs.

"It's devastating, and I hope like heck whoever caused this does not have a job tomorrow," one woman said. "My house was destroyed by a bad contractor."

The water department said water was rerouted so homes in the neighborhood continued to have service. The department said it reloaded the damaged line Tuesday morning and was starting to flush the line to push out any air. During that time, Gugliuzza said some homes may temporarily lose water or have lighter pressure.

She said crews would also stay around the site of the explosion filling in the hole and making sure repairs would hold.

Trinity Boulevard is also under construction for an expansion between East Loop 820 and Precinct Line Road.

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