The vocational education building at the Haines School has been without water since Saturday when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck near Yakutat.
Just about eight hours after that quake, and the dozens of aftershocks that followed, Haines water and sewer supervisor Dennis Durr got a call saying there was water coming up through the ground outside of the building. He met school maintenance supervisor Gary Stigen to investigate and found signs of a large leak.
“You could see it bubbling up through the ground,” Durr said.
With the help of retired water and sewer supervisor Scott Bradford and another borough employee, Scott Adams, Stigen and Durr worked to isolate the building.
“We ran into a couple of issues there, but we were able to isolate it. Now we’re kind of waiting for school to get out of session because it’s kind of a big job,” said Durr.
He said he’s reasonably certain the broken pipe was caused by the earthquake because he went back to look at water and sewer flow records and noticed that the flow went up significantly right after it struck.
“It’s hard to tell exactly, but you can see the tank levels dropped really quick right after,” he said.
His current theory is that the main line into the building was broken by the earthquake, a first in his 20 years of working in the department. But, he said it’s not surprising given the type of older infrastructure leading to the building. Particularly, he said, the current piping includes what are called unrestrained joints, meaning they rely on a rubber gasket for watertight seals. Since the 1990s, Durr said the borough has been using restrained joints or those that have bolts which prevent excessive movement and make it harder for a pipe to back out of a connection.
“They tend to hold together during this type of event better,” he said.
Durr said he didn’t feel the earthquake at his house near Fort Seward, but it’s entirely possible that infrastructure elsewhere in the borough was damaged. Although the large pipe breaking caused a noticeable leak and shift in water pressure monitoring, he said the smaller ones might be harder to see, especially given how common leaks are in water lines.
“Probably 30-40 percent of your water is actually lost to leaks,” he said.
Durr recommended that people who suspect damage, potentially through a loss of water pressure in their homes, can listen to their pipes. Depending on what the pipes are made of, leaks can be detected.
“It creates a frequency that you can hear rumbling through the house,” he said. “With most of our leaks, people say ‘I could hear something going on through my pipe.’”
Durr said residents can call the borough at 907-766-6452 and staff will check on the water lines.