Homes Flooded With Sewer Water

Reprint from The Pyramid, Mt. Pleasant, UT
April 25, 2002

by Sterling D. Allan

EPHRAIM, Utah

 

Eight home basements in southeast Ephraim were flooded by diluted sewage when a 12 inch culinary pipe burst after a backhoe dislodged a rock which hit a joint on the pipe, causing it to burst.  The incident occurred at around 6:00 pm April 19 on the southeast end of town at the East Point development.  Over the course of about 20 - 30 minutes, approximately one quarter to one half a million gallons of water drained from the point of breakage into an open sewage port adjacent to the break.  The overloaded sewer system then flowed up through the plumbing in several homes as far away as a mile and a half.  Residents said the flooding there lasted as long as 45 minutes to an hour.  No injuries were reported.

 

Flooding Basements

"It was coming up through the toilet and the bathtub and even the sink," said Gus Pendleton, whose home was among the worst hit.  "The toilet lid was raised three inches as the water gushed out of it."

"The water was coming out of the toilet like Old Faithful," said Angie Larson, whose home was also hit.  They tried to put towels in the toilet to stop the flow but could not keep up with it.

 

"We thought we had some kind of major plumbing problem," said Layna Mabey, whose unfinished basement was flooded with two inches of sewage.  "We didn't know other houses were having problems as well."

The Pendleton basement, probably worst hit, was filled with approximately six inches of diluted sewer water.  The House of Glass, across the street, was unaffected directly.  However, the owner, Jack Steck, found himself in the unfinished basement of his son a few houses away, helping to mop up from damage there from about an inch of diluted sewage water.

There wasn't any water running down the street, but "there was water coming up from some of the man holes on first east," said Beck.  Other accounts said water was also coming out of the man holes on 800 South.

Half to two thirds of the houses in line of the flooding were spared due to back-flow valves they had in place in their homes.  All new homes are required to have such valves.  The flooding extended nearly as far north as 400 Sough along 100 East.  Bishop Ron Stevenson, who lives across from Ephraim Middle School, found six inches of diluted sewer water in his basement when he arrived home, after the flooding had taken place.

"Once they shut off the water, the flooded water drained back out through the floor drains back into the sewer," said Stevenson.  "We tore out the carpets and threw them away."

 

 

Community Response

"The response of the community was what impressed me the most," said Pendleton, whose experience was shared by others who were also effected.  "We probably had a hundred people come by to help, many of whom we didn't even know.  College students were bringing boxes to help us move things out of the basement.  People are helping us clean clothes.  People have brought food.  They put our children up for the night."

A stream of people were going in and out of the Pendleton house, taking furniture, clothes and other belongings out of the finished basement and into the driveway and to other houses to be cleaned.

 

 

Shutting Off the Water

The accident was caused when a backhoe subcontractor from Even Grade excavating was filling in a hole after installing a man hole sewer connection about 3/4 miles up canyon road to service a new subdivision, East Point, being constructed by Stevens' Development.  The backhoe inadvertently dislodged a large rock, and when it hit the pipe, there was so much pressure in the pipe, the pipe blew.

 

"Water shot sky high," when the pipe first burst, said a worker who had been on the scene.  The typical water pressure in the pipe is 250 psi.  After the initial burst subsided, the water was gurgling two to three feet high as it came out of the pipe.  The newly installed sewer connection, with opening about 2 feet in diameter, was ten feet south of the culinary line break.  The sewer opening was situated in the same large hole that had been dug and which was being filled by the backhoe at the time of the accident, so some of the water drained into that opening.

"Most of the water was going down the bar pit on the south side of the road, and into Ephraim Creek," said Don Olsen, who lives just east of where the break took place and was out watering his horses when the accident took place.  Olsen is a city council member in charge of Public Works.  "The pressure of water coming out of the 12-inch culinary pipe was much greater than that going into the 10-inch sewer pipe," said Olsen.

Further up the canyon, there are two water tanks that together hold 1.5 million gallons of water, and which feed the pipe that busted.  The tanks were half emptied by the time the water was shut off.  "No one knows how full they were to begin with," said Olsen.

"No one knew where the shut-off valve was," said city worker, Terry Dunnigan.  "I knew where it was, so I went up with another guy and we shut it off."  Part of the problem was the time of day.  People were getting off work but were not home yet, so they were hard to reach.

"It took us a while to find the key," said Olsen.  "Afterward, we realized that we could have kept a lot of water from going down the sewer pipes by dropping a large rock down a nearby manhole to block the flow.  Everyone was so busy trying to find the key and the shut off valve, that we didn't think of this at the time."

As the water was shut off, "water was going through there so fast that when we were putting the last few turns on, it was just a bouncing," said Dunnigan.  "You could feel the ground vibrating," said Olsen, who was also there.

 

Moral of the Story

 

"From now on," said Olsen, "we're going to make it mandatory that any construction workers working around major city water lines will check out a key and know where the valves are, then return the key when they are done."