After a day of flooding on Kent Terrace, Wellington Water workers completed repairs on the old broken pipe late last night. At 10pm, this news from Wellington Water:
“To make the area safe overnight, it will be backfilled and fenced off and traffic management will remain in place until morning – but we will work to keep any disruption to traffic to a minimum.
“Crews will be back onsite on Thursday morning to complete final work and we expect the area to be clear by early afternoon, with full reinstatement to follow in the near future.”
We’re pleased to advise that the risk of the shutdown widening this evening has reduced, but we still encourage residents to store water. If a wider shutdown occurs, water tankers will be deployed to affected areas. Due to the repair’s complexity, we anticipate work will continue until later this evening, with service to be restored around midnight.
The areas that may be affected by low or no service are:
– Courtenay Place from Cambridge Tce to Allen St
– Pirie St from Austin St to Kent Tce
– Brougham St from Pirie St to Armour Ave
– Parts of Hataitai and Roseneath
At 1pm, Wellington Water said that due to the complexity of the repair, full service might not be restored till late tonight or early tomorrow morning. It said its crews had reduced the flow enough to excavate around the burst.
“The pipe is now exposed (photo above) however the flow remains very high. We’ll work to isolate the pipe completely so the repair can be completed safely.
“Customers in the following areas may notice a loss of supply or low water pressure.
– Kent Terrace, Cambridge Terrace, Courtenay Place, Pirie Street. If you do, please advise the Wellington City Council customer contact team. Customers in Mt Victoria, Roseneath and Hataitai at higher elevations may notice low water pressure or loss of service.”
Wellington Water’s head of operations and engineering Tim Harty told RNZ’s Midday Report they were struggling to isolate the break because of broken valves.
The repair team was moving through the network, shutting valves to try and stop water flowing into the broken area, but some valves were not operating correctly, making the shut-down area larger than expected. He said the pipe was part of the city’s ageing infrastructure.
Report and photos from RNZ by Bill Hickman – August 21
A burst water pipe has flooded much of Kent Terrace in central Wellington. Contractors were at the flood site – between Vivian Street and Buckle Street – before 5am this morning.
Wellington Water said it is a major repair and is expected to take 8 – 10 hours to fix.
It said the inside lane of Kent Terrace has been closed and it asked motorists heading to the airport to go via Oriental Bay.
At 5am, water was covering nearly three lanes of the road near the northern entrance to the Basin Reserve. The water had reached a depth of nearly 30cm in the centre of the road.
In a statement just before 7am, Wellington Water asked people to avoid the area while traffic management was put in place. “If not please expect delays. We appreciate that this is a main route, so are doing all we can to minimise impact on commuters.
“At this stage, we don’t expect a shutdown to affect any properties but will provide more information as the repair progresses.”
But soon after that statement, Wellington Water provided an update which told a different story:
Crews are investigating reports of no service or low water pressure in higher areas of Roseneath. This may also affect areas of Mt Victoria.
And another update at 10am:
A shutdown of water in the area – needed to fix the pipe – has been extended to cover Courtenay Place, Kent Terrace, Cambridge Terrace.
In order to avoid the occurrence of similar disasters, the intelligent water level velocity hydrological radar monitor can be used for real-time monitoring to reduce unnecessary losses caused by natural disasters
Post time: Oct-21-2024