City of Trail crews worked through Monday night and into Tuesday to repair a water break at the intersection of Victoria Street and Bay Avenue.
A passerby contacted the city late Monday evening after water was seen bubbling up from the intersection.
The main water supply in West Trail suffered from two breaks in the pipeline and affected more than three blocks of businesses in the downtown core.
“We don’t know what caused it, it’s just that infrastructure fails over time,” said Public Works manager Larry Abenante.
“The repair wasn’t as easy as we thought, (the break) was not in one place, it was in two places and it involved a ‘T’ in the line and the ‘T’ fed the water into the main off of Victoria onto Cedar.”
Abenante said the damage affected one block of Cedar, a good portion of Bay Ave and Victoria Street all the way up to the Rossland Ave Booster Station across from the Colombo Lodge.
“We contacted all the owners of all the properties in the immediate area and they all came out and checked their premises,” he said.
“We kept all the catch-basins clean and free and the storm system did what it was supposed to do.”
Although the exact cause of the problem is unknown, Abenante suspects dated infrastructure could have been the source.
The water system faltered for at least 12 hours, but was back in service on Tuesday afternoon. The response crew worked all night and is focused on backfilling the damaged area, cleaning it up and conducting further assessments of the situation.
Abenante said the area would need to be assessed to verify that it’s safe to drive on and suspects the inspection will go over swimmingly, based on the equipment that they’ve been using to operate on the area so far.
“The assessment will probably be done (Wednesday),” he said. “We’re going to work on getting it backfilled and getting it cleaned up and then we’ll go from there.”
Road closures continued Tuesday and potentially today.
Abenante said the restoration is going to take longer to repair due to the required asphalt work.
Photos by Guy Bertrand and Timothy Schafer