Workers bust McGill’s water main (updated)
Eric | July 7, 2008
The Sable Research Lab is located in the McConnell Engineering Building, which is really old and ugly. At the lab we are used to disruptions. We have flaky fire alerts leading to evacuations on at least a monthly basis. Power outages occur even more frequently – not funny if you had just had your most important experiments set up to run on a dozen machines overnight. Unfortunately, instead of tearing the building down and building a new one, McGill has kept on trying to fix it – for ages. The year’s sweet deal is the re-building of an underground tunnel that connects the building with the James Administration building. It began a couple of weeks ago, when people began really upset because McGill destroyed a huge park of the on-campus park and tore down a bunch of really old trees. Nothing major though compared what happened today.
Today around 1PM we were informed that somebody with a digger apparently busted McGill’s one and only (?) water main! (rain) Not less than 12 buildings on the main campus had to be evacuated because the sprinkler system was not operational any more (not that it had ever gone off in the last 10 years). And how did I learn about it? By Email! Sometimes McGill is just so (nerd)
Anyway, the best thing came in tonight’s email. Read for yourself:
[…] However, it will take several days for us to flush the piping systems and to conduct water quality tests to ensure that the water supplied to the buildings is safe to drink. Therefore, before use, all water supplied through faucets and fountains within the impacted buildings must be boiled for a minimum of one hour before consumption. […]
One hour!? Come on! I mean how much water do you have to boil or how good of a kettle do you need to have any water left after boiling it for one hour!? And even if you managed to boil a bathtub full of water how many days would it take to cool it down again? Surely with 30 degrees outside people are not longing for piping hot tea during the day!? I know they are required to write this by law, of course, but I find it pretty ridiculous nevertheless (rofl) Let’s see what’s up next… Rats?
UPDATE (yes) Hehe, apparently somebody else though my way:
REVISED BOIL WATER ADVISORY
Please note that there was an error in the Boil Water Advisory that was issued yesterday regarding the time needed to boil water to ensure that it is safe to drink. Before consuming water from the impacted buildings, the water should be brought to a rapid rolling boil and boiled for one minute. The revised Advisory is shown below.
I am sorry for any confusion or inconvenience that this has caused.
