Massive water main break floods Dundalk neighborhoods (Baltimore)

[charlie and algernon]

Source: Baltimore Sun

A water main break is flooding a large section of Dundalk in Baltimore County.

Baltimore County police spokeswoman Susan Hunt said the water was waist-high in some areas and police were sending swift-water rescue crews to the scene. No injuries were immediately reported from the break, which occurred near Broening Highway and Dunhaven Road.

Television news reports show the break is causing flooding along a number of streets. Cars were submerged up to the door handles and some residents had taken to boats. The images also show part of a two-lane road washed away by the break that occurred Friday afternoon.


Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bal-main-break0918-link,0,6369988.storylink

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I'm watching it on TV and it looks like Katrina aftermath, large areas of the neighborhood are underwater.


This is extraordinarly bad.

[Barack_America]

1. Can you give us some background on the area?

I've only heard of Dundalk from friends and they, um, didn't have complimentary things to say about it.

What kind of homes are we talking about? I'm imaging an area that is not affluent.

[charlie and algernon]

2. i haven't spent much time in Dundalk

but it looks like a lower-middle class, middle-middle class neighborhood. Wiki says the median income is $40,000.

[Orangepeel]

6. Post industrial

It used to have a steel mill, I think.

I'm not near a TV. I hope everyone's okay.

[Igel]

9. Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point plant was

over Bear Creek from Dundalk. Other people could make their way to some of the other industrial facilities scattered around SE Baltimore Country. "Post-industrial" is probably not quite true these days. BS mostly died in the area by the early '80s, with several companies partly reviving the steel mill.

It was a nice enough area when I was growing up in Edgemere (which is where you wind up if you don't want to go over Back River, but up North Point Road). A fair number of older people back then; my father's parents lived there, my sister lived if not in Dundalk proper than really close to it.

The housing is older, I doubt if anybody pulled down the old brick houses to put up McMansions.

[lib_wit_it]

13. My great aunt and uncle lived there in a brick row home, So that's my impression of Dundalk. My

great uncle was David Hasselhoff's uncle, lol! I always thought it was a conservative, racist, blue collar area, but maybe that was just my relatives. Also, I haven't been there since I was a teen in the late seventies.

[madmom]

3. I lived there when I was but a babe, in the late 50's early 60s.

[charlie and algernon]

4. 70" diameter pipe that broke

Officials have yet to shut off the water because they don't know where to shut it off from.

[RC]

8. Don't they have maps and City Engineers?

[anony]

10. re: Don't they have maps and City Engineers?

of course they do. Actually Baltimore has one of the better water systems in the country imo.

but lets look at the timing of the break-- 4:30 on a friday afternoon. Of course they have people and protocol in place to react if this happens in off hours, but the reality is the A team takes awhile to mobilize.

secondly, this is a BIG pipe which services a lot of people. a 40 inch main exploded in baltimore and it shut down a lot of downtown buildings because they didn't have water.

the cross section to this pipe is nearly 4 times times bigger than that!

thirdly, you need to know the kind of material the pipe is and how old it might be. is it steel? pressurized concrete? reinforced concrete?

4thly, its not your average pipe in the road where you can shut off one or two valves and the surrounding pipes can handle the additional pressure. The water in the pipe wants to go somewhere, and if you close a valve and don't give the water somewhere to go, it could rupture in another location.


5th, it is a safety issue. There are not that many valves on large diameter water pipes. it is more or less a transmission main, not a service main. If the valve breaks, it could easily kill a worker trying to operate it because the valve is probably in a vault somewhere, not something which can be closed from the street.

[Captain Hilts]

5. We had a huge one break in Potomac/Bethesda that nearly drowned drivers. nt

[Blue State Blues]

7. Hope everyone's ok, hon N/T

[appal_jack]

11. k&r for American Infrastructure needs

I hope everyone stays safe.

-app

[charlie and algernon]

12. looks like the water is receeding now

they're going to have to rebuild a large chunk of a highway though, as well as renovate and rebuild those pipes.

guess we know where maryland's share of ARRA is going now.