The City of Port Alberni says its water system is fully operational and all usage restrictions have been lifted, a little more than 24 hours after a vehicle crash caused significant damage.
On Thursday, an unloaded logging truck contracted to Mosaic Forest Management crashed into the city's main waterline, damaging about 10 metres of pipe.
The crash caused an estimated 5,000 cubic metres of water to release from the pipe before it was shut down.
After the crash, the city implemented Stage 3 water restrictions for the region, which applied to the City of Port Alberni, the Hupačasath First Nation, the Tseshaht First Nation, the Beaver Creek Water Local Service Area, and the Franklin River Road area.
In a statement Friday evening, the city said repairs had been completed around 3 p.m., and water flow was restored within an hour of that.
“We are very happy that the repairs went smoothly and the team at the site of the waterline break were able to restore water in a timely fashion,” said Mayor Sharie Minions in the statement.
“We did what our community always does when things get tough – we worked together until the challenge was overcome. We are thankful for the community’s co-operation and for support we received from neighbouring local governments and First Nations.”
On Friday morning, Rob Dickinson, the city's director of engineering and public works, told reporters things had gone "as good as (the city) could expect" up to that point.
He says the vast majority of the waterline that was damaged is underground. However, the portion that was damaged is located above ground over a ravine.
Barriers are in place to protect this portion of piping, and the city says it is reviewing how the logging truck was able to impact it.
"This is a 60-year-old pipe that has never been hit before, so this is a very unique situation," he said.
"[The barriers] should have deflected a truck as well, so we're investigating how this could have happened."
He says the decades-old water pipe was performing adequately before the crash.
"This 60-year-old pipe, you'd expect it to last 80 to 100 years, so this isn't anything imminently that we should have repaired or replaced, it's just doing its job," he said.
FULL REVIEW
Minions says Mosaic has been in contact with the municipality and has agreed to help review how the crash occurred.
"They have telematics on their trucks so they'll have full details on what happened and how the accident was caused," she said.
She says the region's entire water system is constantly under review and this incident will be investigated.
"There were safeguards in place. Unfortunately, this was kind of a worst-case scenario," she said.
Dickinson estimates that about 12 households in the region were entirely without water after the water main was shut down.
He noted that the water system had about one more day's worth of water left in its reservoirs.
"Normally we have about four days of water. Unfortunately, when this occurred we lost some of that water during the process, so at this point we have one day of water left which is adequate for our services," he said.
With files from CTV Vancouver Island's Ian Holliday
