Water Service Still Unavailable to Thousands

They awoke Wednesday for the third straight day without one of the basic necessities of life. Tens of thousands of families were without water to wash in, to brush their teeth with, to flush their toilets, to drink.

From stuccoed condos in Reseda to posh mansions on the Westside, the fractured infrastructure began to reveal how grinding this long haul now will be. Broken pipes. Cracked aqueducts. Drinking water yellow with rust. No drinking water at all.

In the northwest San Fernando Valley, about 40,000 customers of the Department of Water and Power were told that their faucets will probably be dry for the rest of the week. Despite round-the-clock efforts, DWP crews had been unable to repair breaks in two major aqueduct lines and hundreds of smaller water mains that fed their communities.

Thousands more customers throughout the city were told to expect low pressure or cloudy or contaminated water for days, the result of power problems and other snafus at filtration plants.

Residents between DeSoto Avenue and Balboa Boulevard and north of the Foothill Freeway (I-210) between the Golden State Freeway (I-5) and Hubbard Avenue were expected to have intermittent service. And a “boil water” advisory was expanded to include customers west of Fairfax Avenue and south of Sunset Boulevard, all the way to Los Angeles International Airport.

For the poor and infirm, the loss was no mere inconvenience. Suddenly, basic sanitation had a price. In some sectors of the Valley, drinking water was selling for $6 a quart and more. Word of water drop-off centers was spreading slowly among refugees cut off from media reports.

“We see the water bottle trucks go by, but they just pass us by,” said Alma Hernandez, who sat huddled with her neighbors beside a makeshift tent outside a cracked Northridge apartment house.

Around her, half a dozen infants and children, sticky and tired, played in the concrete courtyard. Hernandez said the group had water, but they were unable to boil it because they have no gas for stoves. And they could not afford currently inflated prices.

“We have only one can of Similac for six babies,” added neighbor Urania Walker, as she fed tiny sections of an orange to her parched 7-month-old baby girl. Beside her, another woman cradled her own infant, who was damp and feverish.

For those better off, the deprivation was also grating, in a way that somehow went deeper than, say, a cutoff in the electricity or gas supplies.

“Water is different,” said Susan Smith, a Chatsworth woman who has been without it on and off since the quake. It had been days, she said, since her family had been able to flush the toilets in the three bathrooms of her 3,200-square-foot home. Things were getting so smelly, she said, she was thinking of setting up a bucket brigade from her swimming pool to fill her toilet tanks.

And on Tuesday night, she had unthinkingly dropped some eggs into the garbage disposal, realizing a split second afterward that she would have to dig them back out, because they would end up rotting there.

“I feel dirty,” said Smith, who devoutly hoped she could soon wash her hair. “There’s no way to get clean.”

At Northridge Hospital Medical Center, the water seemed to be everywhere but where people needed it. In the wrecked room that had once been the waiting area for the emergency room, broken pipes had flooded the carpets and soaked the ceiling tile.

But the toilet tanks were empty, and had been since Monday morning, when maintenance workers had begun carting water from the rehabilitation swimming pools to the bathroom in wheeled garbage cans. Doctors and nurses moved from patient to patient with plastic bottles of Crystal Geyser drinking water.

“All of a sudden,” said surgical nurse Kyung Lee, “you realize what a precious thing it is.”

Officials said the shortage arose from quake damage to the elaborate infrastructure that delivers water to this desert metropolis. DWP General Manager Dan Waters said that three of the four aqueducts serving Los Angeles have been severed, leaving most of the city to rely on a local reservoir system that contains a supply for just seven to 10 days.

Some DWP officials said that supply could be stretched to a month if necessary. And in seeking to bolster the limited local supply, the DWP has begun pumping ground water from wells in the San Fernando Valley.

But, Waters said, between 3,000 and 4,000 breaks in mains have already been reported. As water service is restored to West Valley neighborhoods, he added, many more will be identified. Moreover, the city’s backup supplier, the Metropolitan Water District, also suffered a devastating blow in the earthquake. A 10-foot break in a huge pipe feeding the MWD’s Granada Hills filtration plant prevented water in the California Aqueduct from reaching the San Fernando Valley.

Officials were hopeful that the pipe would be repaired by late Wednesday. With that line back in service, the MWD could begin service to about one-third of the North San Fernando Valley customers, officials said.

Only about 1% of all the water used by Southern Californians daily is actually ingested. Water officials say that about half of all water used ends up watering lawns and flower beds. An additional 30% to 40% goes to washing people, clothes and dishes. And about 10% is simply lost, much of it running down the drain while users wait for hot water to come up.

Earthquakes create an especially dangerous set of conditions that can contaminate water supplies with bacteria and viruses that can lead to everything from a simple stomachache to life-threatening diseases such as cholera, said Mark Beuhler, director of water quality for the MWD.

Temblors can break underground sewage pipes as well as potable water mains. If water pressure drops, sewage can seep into the water lines, Beuhler said. Complicating the problem is the fact that breaks are difficult to pinpoint because they are underground. As a result, he said, predicting which homes may be getting contaminated water “is like Russian roulette.”

That’s why officials are recommending water sterilization for residents of vast areas of the city. For those with a water supply, but of questionable quality, water officials give the following advice: Boil water for at least five minutes or use eight drops of unscented household bleach per gallon if the water is clear. If the water is cloudy, 16 drops of bleach per gallon of water should be used. Either way, let the mixture sit for 30 minutes before drinking.

Otherwise, DWP tankers filled with potable water will be at the following high schools from 5 a.m. to midnight: Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Kennedy, Sylmar, Cleveland, Taft, El Camino Real and Canoga Park. Tanker trucks are also dispensing water at Chatsworth Convalescent Home and Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Ice will be available from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Kennedy and Sylmar high schools.

Customers should bring their own containers. There is no limit on how much water they can receive because the trucks are constantly refilling and returning to the sites.

No Water

Water service for tens of thousands of San Fernando Valley residents could be a week away. In the meantime, water officials offer these tips on how to cope:

* Check to see if there is still water in your water heater, advises Matt Puffer of the Metropolitan Water District. There could be 50 gallons or more of potable water still there. “That can go a long way if you’re just using it for drinking and washing your face,” said Jerry Gewe of the Department of Water and Power.

* Pool owners can use that water to refill toilets, though they should not drink it because of all the chemicals typically present, officials said.

* If there is no water available for filling toilets, Puffer said, constructing a chemical commode is simple. He suggests lining a 5-gallon bucket with two plastic trash or garbage bags. After using, toss in a handful of powered laundry detergent to keep down odors. And if you only need to urinate, Puffer said, “you can always just head for the rose bushes.”

* Use paper cups and plates to eliminate dish washing, “or just eat out at McDonald’s a little more often,” Gewe said.

* If you suspect pipes are broken, turn off the water at the meter so there is no flooding when water returns.

* When the water does return, Puffer said, be sure to allow it to run for a while to clear out sediment in the pipes.