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Water-Main Break Disrupts Subway Service
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9XEYGmt9WM[/ame]
very disgusting.... I don't want to know why the liquid's brown. it blew up just couple min when I was there, getting my coffee. notice in my video how the street was leveled.
Updated, 2:30 p.m. | A 12-inch water-main installed in 1870 burst near the entrance to the Holland Tunnel on Monday afternoon, sending torrents of water flooding into the Canal Street subway station, disrupting service on the Nos. 1, 2 and 3 lines between 34th and Chambers Streets and nearly ruining what had been a grand opening, less than an hour earlier, for the new South Ferry terminus on the No. 1 line.
Workers from the city’s Department of Environmental Protection responded to the water-main break, outside 75 Varick Street, just above Canal Street, by shutting down the main between Canal and Watts Streets. No customers have been left without water, a department spokeswoman, Mercedes Padilla said.
“We have a crew on location working on the water main,” Ms. Padilla said.
Firefighters and workers from Con Edison and the Department of Environmental Protection were at the scene, where sidewalks were buckled and two lanes of traffic had been closed on Varick Street.
Around noon, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had formally opened the new South Ferry station, one of the oldest in the system, which was expanded to accommodate trains that are longer because they have more cars. (Previously, passengers disembarking at South Ferry had to use the first five cars.)
The first No. 1 train to leave the new station departed at 12:05 p.m., heading northbound, and trains continued to run regularly until 12:25 p.m., when officials announced that service was interrupted because water had entered the tracks at the Canal Street station. By around 12:40 p.m., the authorities announced that all service had been canceled because of the water situation.
M.T.A. officials would not admit to disappointment. In fact, they pointed out one silver lining: Passengers who were stranded at South Ferry were able to disembark and take advantage of a new free transfer between the No. 1 line at South Ferry and the Whitehall station on the R and W lines.
Daniel Gerardi, an emergency response officer from New York City Transit, the arm of the M.T.A. that oversees the subways, said the water-main break also affected other lines.
“It’s affecting the No. 5 service and the Lexington Avenue line service, because the 2 is being rerouted to the Lexington Avenue line,” he said. “We are experiencing extensive delays on Seventh Avenue, the West Side line, and also on the East Side. Our pumps are running down there. We’re trying to extract some of the water from the tracks. Right now, the tracks are flooded.”
Near the water-main break, there were a bulldozer and a dump truck. Workers from the Department of Environmental Protection were jackhammering open an area in front of 75 Varick Street.
Meanwhile, M.T.A. workers, wearing hard hats and reflective vests, lowered a heavy blue Gorman-Rupp pump down the steps. Nine workers held 30 feet of rope, bent around a stanchion, to lower the pumps, yelling out, “Ready. Go. Slack.”
Thick slabs of the street lifted up four inches above the normal street level. Brown sediment everywhere from when the water was still gushing. Some of the workers wore yellow rubber boots with black soles above the knee; others had wrapped plastic trash bags over their jeans.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9XEYGmt9WM[/ame]
very disgusting.... I don't want to know why the liquid's brown. it blew up just couple min when I was there, getting my coffee. notice in my video how the street was leveled.
