Posted on 12/24/2018 3:39:08 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
A 96-year-old water main burst in a South Los Angeles neighborhood Friday, sending water bubbling up above the pavement, flooding streets and creating a void that submerged cars.
It took the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power more than four hours to fully shut off the 24-inch cast iron main as water inundated the neighborhood at 55th Street and Towne Avenue.
About 30 adults and 20 children were displaced from their homes; the Fred Roberts Recreation Center was set up as a temporary shelter.
LADWP is covering the cost of hotel stays for some affected residents while crews do cleanup and repair, Shavely said.
The break provided an unsettling reminder of Los Angeles crumbling water infrastructure, which has been a recurring problem for years. Large sections of the water system are old and corroded, and the water district faces a continuous challenge in trying to replace the infrastructure before breaks occur.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
The local dims probably say in private “let’em drown”.
14 years and 5000 posts!
I’ve spent hours in there.
I grew up at the same time in West Whittier. Last night, when I went out to take pictures of Christmas lights, I walked on the same sidewalk that I did so often for ten years beginning in 1953. It doesn't look all that much different today, but it's still a different galaxy. In 2018, You wouldn't allow a kid to play in his front yard unsupervised, let alone walk down the block, in that neighborhood.
We’re NOT on our way Rampart.
KMG-retired fat!
I know a guy whose family lived about a half a mile from that area. In the mid-twentieth century, there were a lot of Italians living in the neighborhood and there was a a Catholic church with a largely Italian congregation at 49th and Main. Later the area turned black. Now, the neighborhood seems to be “diverse,” and the Catholic church has become an Ethiopian Orthodox church.
+1. Exactly. New water pipes are needed to replace 100 year old ones - but Pipes don’t pay union dues to the Rats. Capital-labor ratio’s all screwed up thanks to leftist politics. One big earthquake’ll destroy the old infrastructure, for decades. Glad I moved from CA to NH in 2015.... Anyone with a house out there will own an expensive uninhabitable paperweight, after the Big One.....thanks Garcetti, don’t bother running for President in 2020, idiot.....
If California is anything like Texas, and it probably is in this respect, those with property and other damages won’t collect a cent from the city.
Of course, the city, state, and county has millions for the homeless and illegals.
New tax....INCOMING!
“Yeah, but I think the bullet train is still on schedule”
Huh? Remember some of us are graduates of the Sheldon Cooper School of sarcasm.
That’s a really good one.
Surfs Up dudes!
I’m not very sympathetic either. If they had invested in their infrastructure instead of defending illegals, they may have prevented this.
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The photos look like somewhere in the third world.
I wonder why?
My wife's family were some of those people who came with the Okies in the 1930s and defense industries in the 1940s. Some of them moved just a little east into San Bernardino and Riverside County just as the rot started in earnest in the 1980s.
Her extended family who has money to move is just waiting until they retire to leave what was still a fairly decent place in Moonbeam Brown's first term as governor.
Ugh, cast iron (and galvanized steel). It happens. A couple years ago at work a 4 inch pipe burst over a 3 day weekend. That pipe was about 35 years old. Nobody noticed (or cared to report it) as it flooded 4 feet high and poured out into the street for days.
There is a company I know of - a stockbroker friend pitched their stock to me years ago - that makes rubber sleeve inserts on a scale for municipal use. This is a problem across the country - old water mains and sewers that crack and break, and very expensive to repair and rebuild. Much cheaper to be pro-active and go in and line these pipes with a rubber coating. I didn’t buy the stock. It may be doing well, but my hunch is cities and states aren’t that big into the “maintenance and prevention” business the way a private property owner would be. They just wait until it breaks and charge it to the taxpayers.
Image number 1 caption: “The swamp creature Mad Maxipad should pop up any minute to blame President Trump.”
Water companies practice what I call “Whack-a-mole” maintenance ie: “When a leak shows up - fix it”. We don’t have any dollars to replace that failing water line system.
The plastic liner is possible fix and is used successfully for sewer systems.
Yep - part of the problem with Kalifornia is that they wanted to do more and do it faster so they started offering a lot of free stuff 60 or so years ago to draw people there...they drew way to many who only saw the “free” part...
Well The 1st item on ANY Board of Directors meeting is how to give themselves another Raise and more Benefits.
Those old Distribution Systems are a Repair and Maintenance Nightmare from He!!. Between standard wear on Mains from both inside and out due to pH corrosion control (or lack there of) and the Hammering of Pumps comb take the Toll.
One of the Original Raw Water Tunnels feeding NYC made of Bricks is so bad they can’t shut it off to make repairs because the Tunnel would collapse. Last I heard they are working on a Repair Plan to be done while it still in use. Good Luck to Them...
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