Boil order more inconvenience than problem
Staff writer
The butterfly effect is a funny thing.
After a water line broke Wednesday night in Peabody, city workers and a few workers sent by Hillsboro dispatched to the 7th and Vine St., where they worked until 2:30 a.m. in below-freezing weather to repair the line.
Water soon came back on. But if pressure drops, the state issues a boil notice — as it did Thursday morning — and boil orders must be in place until water is tested, which typically takes 24 hours. That’s exactly what happened Friday morning, when the notice was lifted. Still, the order made for an out-of-the-ordinary Thursday for businesses around town.
Chris Crocker, administrator at Peabody Health and Rehab, bemoaned the notice. A thick binder with the word “Disaster” printed on the edge lay on his desk.
“We started implementation last night,” he said Thursday. “Usually, when a line breaks, they always go into a boil water warning here in Peabody. It’s a chronic issue in this area.”
That morning, Crocker and his team put out five-gallon water tanks for personal use, supplied bottled water to patients who needed it, and ran to Dollar General for bags of ice.
Patients using bathroom water to bathe or wash their face, he said, had been put on hold.
Overall, Crocker seemed prepared, if a bit annoyed.
“We have contractors, vendors who provide emergency water,” he said. “We always have emergency water on hand in case we need to go into something like this. … If it goes on for too long, that’s when we have to really dig into our emergency preparedness plan.”
The more serious plan would involve getting large tanks of potable water from the county and non-potable water from the sewer department or the county lake. With those supplies, the nursing home would be able to last for a long time without running water.
Down the street at Westview Manor, dietary manager Shelly Cain said her kitchen crew was making meals without issue.
“We had the bottled water on hand, so that helped,” she said. “I’ve unplugged the ice machine so we can get it emptied out. We’re still able to make coffee, tea, and Kool-Aid, because we’re using Culligan [bottled] water.”
Previous boil notices over the years had made her prepared.
“It’s happened enough that we have to take precautions,” Cain said.
She was only really worried about one thing.
“The residents have their Christmas party tomorrow, so hopefully it won’t affect that,” she said Thursday, before the boil order was lifted. “I don’t think it will.”
Peabody Market employees said the notice meant they were selling lots of ice but not much of anything else.
One employee expressed surprise at how little bottled water was being sold. It seemed most businesses were going to larger chain stores.
“I thought we’d have a run on them, but we haven’t,” she said.
The boil notice actually decreased business for the store.
“We’re not selling any fountain drinks, which is what most people come in for,” the employee said. “It’s not normally this low.”
Pop’s Diner was an exception. Their staff had bought two 24-packs of bottled water as well as ice from Peabody Market.
A server at Pop’s said the morning had been difficult.
“We’re having to do cans of pop, and we’re using the tea from yesterday,” she said.
Inside the Peabody-Burns school district office, superintendent Antoinette Root stressed the normality of the situation.
“We went and got bottled water for all the kids, and everything else is normal,” she said. “It’s something we’ve done before. It’s not unusual. We just go get the bottled water, and we go on with life.”
While Root sat in her office, the revving of a motorcycle could be heard. Then silence. Then, a few seconds later, revving again.
The cause was Isaac Hilliard, a volunteer firefighter distributing boil-notice flyers door-to-door with the help of his trusty motorbike.
“The chief of the fire department asked if anybody could help,” he explained.
He had worked for Peabody in the past and had some knowledge of the city water lines.
“They’re just old,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get a grant to get them replaced.”
Hilliard enjoyed biking around, though he did think it might take a while to reach every affected house.
“I started all the way on the east, on the far end of 2nd St.,” he said. “There’s supposed to be another guy doing it. Hopefully he’s going faster than I am.”