Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Shake, Rattle, and Roll!

Earthquake, at about a quarter to twelve on my clock. Felt like about a magnitude 4 here.

Of course, the USGS site was swamped. Turns out to be about a 5.8, almost 30 miles away. It's large enough, and close enough, to activate the DWP's emergency plan.

So far, all the dams and reservoirs have been checked, and they're OK. Next step is to look for any breaks in the major trunk lines. If these are broken, some areas of the city could be out of water, we might have to use some reservoirs that have been taken out of service, and the section where I work may get very busy checking for contamination from stuff getting in to broken water mains.

Fingers crossed, everybody. So far, no reports of "no water, should be on", which would show up if we had a bunch of broken mains. (Well, there's one in the customer call database. Maybe it's isolated to just that one address -- or maybe the neighbors aren't home to run water right now. Time will tell.)

Update: USGS reports the magnitude as 5.4.

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