Cold temperatures cause water problems
Tara Kearsey
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Dec 11/00) - The onset of extremely cold temperatures caused all sorts of problems for Yellowknife businesses and residents.
Temperatures have been hanging in at the -40 degree mark since Thursday, resulting in pipe freeze-ups and water pipe breaks.
The Industry club was forced to close its doors at 6 p.m. Thursday when the water pipes froze.
"I had to put some heaters under the floor to heat them up," said Owen Smith, part-owner and general manager. The bar re-opened at 11 p.m.
Early Saturday afternoon, bar manager Lisa Tesar entered The Cave Club to find the floor flooded with at least four inches of water. The flood occurred when one of the main water pipes on the second floor of the building burst.
Staff were called in and the water was cleaned up about two hours later. The bar was re-opened for business that evening.
Gary Craig, the city's director of public works, said the city pumphouse after-hours emergency division received three calls Sunday from residents who had frozen pipes.
Craig said Ken Pich, owner of Pich's Steam contacted the emergency number as well.
"Ken called and said he's had 11 (calls about freeze-ups) so our guys are going out to give him a hand thawing services."
But these problems are not unusual for this time of year.
"These problems still always happen every winter.
"It just depends on how much of their services are exposed or if they've gone away for a couple days and didn't have anyone in there running the water," he said.
Environment Canada is forecasting Yellowknife temperatures will stay around the -39 mark over the next few days.
