Broken main throws pipe wrench into neighbors’ holiday plans

Newlyweds Alan and Maureen Okuye managed to turn wine into water on Thanksgiving -- figuratively speaking, of course.

Married just two months, the Sherman Oaks couple were looking forward to celebrating their first big holiday together. They awoke with a houseful of relatives to host, showers to take, a dinner feast to prepare -- only to find that they had no running water.

They called the Department of Water and Power and learned that it might be three or four days before their spigots were flowing again.

A water main had broken in the 3800 block of Woodcliff Road, leaving about 300 other residences in the same predicament: scrambling to figure out how they would boil potatoes, wash vegetables and dishes, flush toilets and bathe if they remained at home for Thanksgiving dinner.

Some of their neighbors were in a panic. “It was just like a nightmare,” said Arpy Hatzikin, who was expecting 22 guests for dinner.

Temma Lapin, back from a five-mile power walk around the hilly neighborhood, planned to take a hot shower before going to a neighbor’s home for the holiday feast.

She improvised with a sponge bath with bottled water. Her neighbor used water from a swimming pool to clean up and switched from china to paper plates for her 15 dinner guests.

Those who lived closest to the broken main had to contend with not only inconvenience but also deafening noise, as crews worked late into the night digging up asphalt to repair the cracked main, built a half century ago.

Shawn Rad, who lives about a block from ground zero, said his family abandoned plans for dinner at home with about a dozen invitees. Instead, about midmorning, they packed up their turkey and headed to his aunt’s house for showers and dinner.

The newly married Okuyes -- veteran campers -- tried to make the best of things. They headed to the store to buy bottled water. On their way home, they spotted a neighbor taking in his groceries. On a whim, they stopped and asked if he had water.

They were in luck. The man invited them to help themselves to his garden hose. The couple returned with improvised cisterns: a plastic storage bin, an ice chest, a plastic paint bucket.

“We felt a little like refugees,” said Alan Okuye, filling the containers as the neighbor’s elegantly dressed dinner guests arrived.

As a gesture of gratitude, the Okuyes gave their generous neighbor a bottle of wine.

“We turned wine into water,” Maureen Okuye joked.

They heated some of that water for sponge baths. They used more to wash the vegetables. They used it sparingly, in case the water didn’t return for days. But about 7:30 p.m., the water started running.

They weren’t sure the flow was for real: There’d been a similar tease in the early afternoon, when the water came on for about 10 minutes before running dry again. The second time was for real, for theirs and about 250 other residences. The other 50 households had running water at 3 a.m. Friday.

“We were lucky,” said Alan Okuye’s sister, Sheryl Sauter, who arrived with her husband and two daughters the night before the water went out. “It made you thankful for the things we did have, like power.”

valerie.reitman@latimes.com