Local
Motorists escape icy torrent after Md. water main explodes
By: Kathleen Miller
Examiner Staff Writer
December 24, 2008
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| Floodwaters erode the side of River Road in Potomac, Md., after a 66-inch water main broke, sending rushing water, large rocks and debris across the street. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
National and local television carried live footage of daring attempts by helicopter and boat to rescue the nine passengers in eight vehicles caught in the currents that took over a stretch of the now aptly named River Road.
Montgomery County firefighters rescued five of the motorists, including two who were placed in a rescue boat and airlifted to safety by a state police helicopter. The other four people “self-evacuated,” county officials said, plunging into the ice-cold water to wade to safety on the side of the road. No serious injuries were reported, but five people were taken to hospitals for potential hypothermia as temperatures hovered around 20 degrees Tuesday morning, fire officials said.
“The work of fire and rescue officials prevented what could have been, in my opinion, a potential loss of life,” Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said.
The 44-year-old water main that burst is not ancient, according to water system experts who say pipes should last 50 to 100 years. This is the third water system catastrophe to strike suburban Maryland in the past six months. Last month, thousands of Prince George’s County residents living in a 38-square-mile section of the jurisdiction were told to boil their drinking water for days, when officials feared massive pipe burst had exposed the water supply to bacteria. In June, tens of thousands of Montgomery County residents did the same, after yet another gigantic pipe ruptured.
Officials with the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission, the water utility shared by the two counties, have repeatedly warned over the past year that massive pipe failures were likely unless the region took immediate action to pour money into replacing aging pipes.
Leaders of the two counties, however, have been unable to agree on how to pay for replacing the pipes and even who should become the utility’s new general manager — the position has been vacant since the end of February.
Around 5 p.m. Tuesday, Leggett had spoken to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley several times about the situation on the state road, but had yet to speak to Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson.
“In a bi-county agency, there are a lot of people who sit at the table,” Johnson’s spokesman John Erzen said. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution; most of the proposals we have seen would have seen some pretty big increases on people’s bills to pay for things. You have people who use a lot more water than other people. We don’t want to be disproportionate with how we do this.”
Leggett says he has asked Maryland’s congressional delegation to pursue federal funding to help rebuild parts of the troubled system, but that residents of both counties will also need to contribute.
He told The Examiner that he had objected to a decision made in the early ’90s when he sat on the County Council to go five or six years without an increase in water utility rates.
“You can see when a library needs a rebuild, when a school is overcrowded, when a roof leaks in a recreational center,” Leggett said. “You don’t see problems in a water and sewer system until something like today happens.”
Examiner Staff Writer Freeman Klopott contributed to this report.
More from Kathleen Miller
- MoCo police will review handling of assistant fire chief’s crash
- Atheists get day in court over effort to ban God from inauguration ceremony
- Leggett wants new Rockville jail, council chief calls too pricey
- Opposing groups probe immigration policies in Md.
- Md.’s River Road reopens after water main break
