Palolo homes flooded by broken water main
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
An early morning water main break shot geysers of drinking water high into the air, tore up street paving, ripped up sidewalks and had residents of a Palolo neighborhood scrambling to fight back the floods.
Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser
Board of Water Supply technicians were expected to work until well after dark last night to repair the aging main, officials said, and contractors will likely be brought in today to repair 10th Avenue and the adjoining sidewalk.
Richard "Rasta" Ma'ae, a worker for A-1 Extraction cleans up Gerald and Tomoko Dung's storage space after a broken main sent water pouring into the house.
The 16-inch main broke at about 6:30 a.m. in front of a house at 1510 10th Ave. near Maluhia Street.
Garry Ono said he was sleeping upstairs when he heard his in-laws, on the ground floor, scurrying to move furniture. As he woke up and came down the stairs, he heard a sound like heavy rain.
Water was flowing in through a door that led to the carport, he said, saturating the carpet. The carport had about a foot of standing water.
"This is the second time in the last two or three years," Ono said as he and his son, Christian, came out to the street to fill a bucket with drinking water from a water company tank. And, he said, another pipe once broke uphill from 10th, flooding some of his neighbors' properties.
Robert Utterdyke, a work foreman for the Board of Water Supply, said his team was working hard to have water service restored by late last night. Behind him a backhoe was scooping mud from a hole nearly 10 feet deep, exposing several yards of the burst pipe. An electric company crane held a utility pole upright in the crater.
The water pipes in Ono's neighborhood and in other older neighborhoods across O'ahu were nearly 50 years old, Utterdyke said. They were scheduled for replacement, but the list was altered each time a break occurred. The more troublesome a neighborhood, he said, the higher its pipes ranked on the list.
About 20 residences were without water services in lower Palolo last night. A smaller break later in the day left an unknown number of Nu'uanu residents without water as well, a water supply official said last night.
Gerald and Tomoko Dung, who live at 3468 Maluhia St., just behind Ono, got the worst of the water damage according to A-1 Extraction workers, who, contracted by the Water Supply Board, were pulling up the flooring of the Dung's storage room.
The walls would have to be stripped, too, they said.
Dung said his wife, Tomoko, woke him early yesterday when she heard an odd noise. When he walked outside to investigate, he saw a waterfall cascade over a short wall that separated his property from the back yards of houses on 10th Avenue.
"I opened that door," he said yesterday, nodding toward the room where the contractors were working. "And the water just poured out, like something in a cartoon.
"Fifteen minutes later," he said, "Tomoko opened it, and the same thing happened."
