Displaced woman loses service dog in ABQ water main break, asking for help
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) –Water came back on again Monday morning around midnight for many in the Northeast Heights area of Albuquerque after a drinking water line broke and exploded out of the street Sunday afternoon. However, the geyser left one woman displaced, and her service dog missing; and it may be days until the hole in the ground is fixed.
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“It was just like a loud boom. It was just really loud. And then when the water started, and the mud started to come out,” said Rose Romero, who was making lunch for her daughter when the geyser shot out of the ground just after noon Sunday. The water line ran under Morris Street, off of Montgomery Boulevard.
“We just kept watching and it was getting higher and higher and then all of a sudden we started hearing the water going into the yard,” Romero said. Romero is mostly blind—her service dog, Ivy, was in the yard when the water came crashing down. “I told my daughter, ‘you need to go get Ivy,’ at that point because we didn’t want her out there to start with because it was so loud.”
Then, her windows began to shatter from the water: “We smelled gas and heard the noise and that’s when the roof caved into the garage.”
Romero and her daughter got out, but Ivy got lost in the chaos and is still missing. “They looked for her all over the house, and it’s not a big area, and I said she could’ve gone to the garage but they’ve been all over, she’s not in there,” Romero said.
Ivy is a 14-year-old black Labrador Retriever, whom Romero depends on. She’s offering a reward if someone can find and bring her home. “…I need her. She’s still a working dog, she’s not retired.”
Neighbors, including an apartment complex and a retirement community, lost water for the evening—like Joe Azar, who came home to dry faucets. “Well, you know it can happen anywhere; I guess I didn’t know it would happen here,” Azar said.
David Morris, public affairs manager with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority (ABCWUA), says it’s a problem that dates back roughly 40 years.
“Apparently, back in the mid-to-late 80s the water department had made a tap into the pipe at this location and that weakened the pipe such that it gave way yesterday,” Morris said. “A tap is just basically inserted a new pipe into an old pipe so that you can get water out of the old pipe into the new pipe to send it somewhere else where you need it.”
The pipe under Morris Street dates back to 1973. While the ABCWUA says it doesn’t believe the rest of the line will have issues, they are still checking. “We do have an asset management program in place where we identify high risk areas. This particular pipe isn’t considered high risk, actually the pipe’s in very good shape; it was just this particular point at which that tap occurred that caused the problem,” Morris said.
“We think the pipe for the most part is in good condition but we’ll be evaluating that as we move forward,” Morris said.
Meanwhile, the community is left in disbelief: “I don’t know what to think but I think the city is not doing a very good job,” Romero said.
The ABCWUA says these repairs will take a few days, and people in the area might have water outages intermittently during that time. “They’ve made a temporary repair to the line but because the pipe is made out of concrete we’re gonna have to actually fabricate a new piece to go into this and that’s going to take a couple of days,” Morris said.
Morris Street will also remain closed in that time while crews work to replace the section of the water line and then re-pave the road.
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