AUSTIN, Texas — A massive water line break that happened Friday night along Wells Branch Parkway in front of the Milan Apartments is still leaving many residents in North Austin without fresh water.
At around 5:30 p.m. on Friday, a contractor hit a 24-inch concrete and steel pipe. Crews worked throughout the night to fix it before finishing repairs late Saturday afternoon, but all customers in the area are still under a 24-hour boil water notice.
One resident from the Milan Apartments described the moment gallons of water was spraying into the air near his complex.
“Half the neighborhood came out to see what was going down,” Peter Martin said. “We come out and then there’s just like, it looks like a fire hydrant shooting water maybe, you know, 50 to 100 meters in the air it feels like.”
The Milan Apartments passed out cases of water to its residents Saturday morning and even went as far as encouraging them to take buckets of water from the community pool to use to flush their toilets with.
But some local businesses across the street weren’t as fortunate to have access to water. Inka Chicken had to close its doors on what would be some of the busiest days of the week.
“It’s definitely huge because, you know, we kind of rely on these days the most throughout the week,” Richard Jordan, the co-owner of Inka Chicken, said.
Jordan was out of town when the break happened, but said he can feel the effects of his employees being out of work.
“I know they, you know, they want to work and they want to put in their hours so that they can also receive those hours on their paycheck as well,” Jordan said.
Akhil with the New Sitara Indian Cuisine, right down the road on Wells Branch Parkway, also felt the effects of being without water for some of their busiest days. They were in the middle of a busy Friday night dinner rush when their water suddenly shut off.
“We’re managing somehow, you know, for a few hours, but it’s hard to maintain without water,” Akhil said.
Akhil said it’s also been difficult having to turn away customers who didn’t know that they were closed.
“Not only you know, loss on the money side, but we’re also going to lose some of the customers that call into us during the weekends,” Akhil said.
The 24-hour boil water notice started at around 2:45 p.m. on Saturday.