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Commuters along U.S. 19 will have to fight closed lanes again, while residents around the break must continue to boil their drinking and cooking water.
By RICHARD DANIELSON, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 7, 2002
PALM HARBOR -- Hundreds of people should boil their drinking water, and commuters ought to consider an alternative to U.S. 19 again today because of a broken water line that caused part of the highway to collapse late Tuesday night.
Pinellas County utilities officials restored water service to about 500 to 600 homes in the Highland Lakes area shortly after 4 p.m. Wednesday. But they said residents should boil water used for drinking, cooking or brushing teeth until tests show that it was not tainted. That could take until Friday afternoon.
In Highland Lakes, many residents first learned of the late Tuesday night break when they got up Wednesday morning.
At their condo in Andover Village, retirees Al and Ruth Forbes turned to their hurricane water supply, stored in empty cranberry juice jugs. Nearby, authorities opened a fire hydrant on Highlands Boulevard to provide others with water.
"It was like the old days when you walked down to the pump to carry back your water," said Al Forbes, 87, a retired airline pilot.
The homes where water must be boiled until further notice are east of U.S. 19 in the Pine Ridge subdivision as well as in Highland Lakes. In Highland Lakes, affected streets include Sherbrooke Lane, Whitebridge Drive, areas from Queen Anne Drive west along Highlands Boulevard to U.S. 19, Whithorn Place, Byrnedale Court, Heather Place and possibly W Dorchester Drive.
Meanwhile, officials with the Florida Department of Transportation hoped to finish filling and paving a 20-foot-wide hole that opened under a southbound turn lane of U.S. 19 about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday. They expected that all lanes of traffic could be reopened after today's morning rush hour.
Authorities funnelled three lanes of southbound traffic on U.S. 19 into a single lane after the break, causing backups that stretched to Alderman Road.
"Our customers can't even get in the plaza because everybody's cutting through" the parking lot in search of a shortcut around the jam, said Karen DeLuca, manager of Napoli's Pizzeria in Alderman Plaza. "There's no one there giving any type of direction. It's a nuthouse."
Farther south, hundreds of homeowners and some businesses spent the day without water.
"Put it this way: it has cost me about $3,500," said Nick Magriplis, 46, who owns the Nicholas Michael Salon in the Sabal Ridge Shopping Center. "Clients are angry."
On a typical day, the salon's dozen or so stylists will handle hundreds of appointments. Without water, however, they were only able to accommodate a fraction of those customers.
"That can affect our color treatments and everything we do," Magriplis said. "You start to apply chemical treatments (to hair), you have to rinse them and rinse them and rinse them."
A few doors away, a sign on the door of Carrabba's Italian Grill Wednesday afternoon apologized to customers but said, "Due to lack of running water, we are not currently open. . . . We will open when water is back on."
Even businesses that did not lose water still lost business Wednesday. Across U.S. 19 in Highland Lakes Square, many clients canceled appointments at IronFit Personal Training because heavy equipment blocked the main entrance to the plaza.
"People are not getting through," IronFit owner Waldemar Krol said. "They can't turn in."
The pipe that broke was a cast-iron 12-inch distribution line, county utilities officials said. When it went, a torrent of water washed out a hole at least 7 to 8 feet deep on the west side of U.S. 19, just north of Nebraska Avenue.
Someone had noticed signs of a water line leak on the opposite side of U.S. 19 last week, and county utilities officials had already summoned a contractor to begin to work on finding the leak when the break occurred, said Carlos Solis, senior engineer and construction manager in the utilities department.
When he first got on the scene Tuesday night, sheriff's Deputy Kevin Lewis said water was burbling up near a light pole on the west side of U.S. 19.
"Five minutes later . . . I noticed a big burst of water and part of the lane on U.S. 19 started to buckle," Deputy Kevin Lewis said. The 20- to 25-feet-foot hole consumed the highway's outside turn lane and caused part of the remaining pavement to sag slightly.
The break immediately flooded the parking lots of a nearby Wendy's restaurant and Highland Lakes Square. A stream of silty water also rushed down Highlands Boulevard into the Homestead Woods subdivision.
Five hours after the break, Trisha Johnson returned home to Homestead Woods from a late job decorating Publix for the holidays and wondered whether she would even make it home.
"I was afraid I wasn't even going to be able to get through," said Johnson, 20. "It was water and dirt the whole way."
-- Richard Danielson can be reached at 445-4194 or Danielson@sptimes.com.