A pipe suffered a rupture on Lincoln Green in Starkville Sept. 5, causing water damage and disrupting service to the nearby areas.
The rupture caused an overflow of water into the Social Block apartment complex, flooding the parking lot and causing water damage to cars. Water services of nearby apartment complexes were shut down for most of the day until Starkville Utilities repaired the pipe.
Edward Kemp, general manager of Starkville Utilities, said the company shut the water off to surrounding areas as part of normal procedure.
“We repair water breaks just about every day,” Kemp said. “Some are large, some are small and everywhere in between.”
Kemp is a Starkville resident who has been in public service for the last 15 years. He said many pipes in Starkville are over 100 years old, but that age is not the only factor that can cause a pipe to break.
“There are numerous factors that can cause a pipe to burst besides age,” Kemp said. “Construction, falling power lines, weather and extreme temperatures can cause pipes to break as well.”
Kemp stated that they were unsure which of those factors caused the pipe to break.
Subrina Phipps, a customer service employee at Starkville Utilities, said that Starkville Utilities treated this burst the same way they treat other incidents.
“That day, obviously, we received a call,” Phipps said. “What we normally do is regardless of whether it is a large outage or small outage, any kind of water, electric anything that has to do with impairing the services, we try to let customers know about it on Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets that we use predominantly here at Utilities.”
In addition to letting citizens know that they would be disrupting water service, Starkville Utilities told victims of the flooding where and how to repair their water-logged vehicles.
“In this specific instance, a lot of customers obviously had damage to their vehicles,” Phipps said. “So, our job is also to let them know where they can go to get those taken care of. For this instance, we were trying to let them know where to go, that they can file claims for it, that they would need to get up with city hall to file a claim for it.”
Many Social Block residents on the ground floor said they were worried that the water would leak into their apartments.
Social Block resident Jomari Evans said he was worried that drastic measures would need to be taken.
“Honestly, I say I felt nervousness really about my house,” Evans said. “Pretty much worried about if it would be flooded or if they were going to move us out.”
Evans said that a fellow resident and friend had suffered from water damage both on the exterior and interior of their car. Evans said that other residents felt anger and fear at the destruction of their property.
“They were pretty much in shock,” Evans said. “They didn’t know if they were really gonna have a ride to and fro because of the cars and all that being flooded inside.”
Evans believes that more effective measures could be implemented in the future to prevent accidents like this from happening and to improve communication with victims.
Phipps said Starkville Utilities is already working on ways to improve communication.
“I think we’re always open to improvement,” Phipps said. “That’s always a goal. We’re always evolving, trying to provide optimal service to the citizens of Starkville. We want to be available to them as much as we can. We want to give them as much information as we can. And we want to do it in a professional manner.”
General Manager Kemp said that Starkville Utilities is implementing a plan to reduce the amount of breaks and ruptures that occur in Starkville.
“We have a pretty expensive pipeline improvement program where we’re going throughout the community and replacing both water and sewer lines,” Kemp said. “And we do these in areas that have the highest number of breaks and issues.”
Kemp said that Starkville Utilities is focusing on what they can do in the future.
“That is an ongoing process, and we have a lot of infrastructure on the ground that is decades and decades old,” Kemp said. “And a lot of it has reached the end of its life and is being replaced. So, the plan will be to continue to see us improving our system, upgrading our system, using modern material and, you know, making sure we are trying to proactively prepare for the future.”