In the early hours of yesterday morning, a Saturday, a water main burst in Observatory. It was at the top of Station Road, just below the traffic lights on Lower Main Road. Somebody who saw the damage said that it looked like the aftermath of a small earthquake. We don't get earthquakes in Cape Town much, the last minor tremor was in Tulbagh, 121km away, in December, and, the last big earthquake, the biggest in South African history, was a 6.3 in the same place, in 1969. So he must have known what they looked like from photographs.
It must have been in the early hours, because we still had a trickle at six in the morning.
I'm not sure the first time they were told about it, but they had the area cordoned off, with men working on it, by nine. When we went past at midday, the men had dug a deep trench. When we came past again, at three in the afternoon, they had a huge back-hoe digging an even bigger trench.
The water was back on again at about five.
We are very short of water, at the moment, not, fortunately, anything like as bad as further North, where there is a terrible drought, but the dam water levels this year are the lowest they've been over the past five years, though the levels did build up considerably in February, despite it being the dry season. There's a picture of the levels at our largest reservoir, 'Theewaterskloof' below.
So it's important that bursts are repaired quickly, and good to know just how quickly they can be repaired, and how good our water department is at their jobs. Congratulations!
