Cold weather in Tulsa isn't just causing roads to get slippery.
The city sent crews out to address a number of reported water line breaks.
"We will continue to work through the night to get those repaired and any future breaks that may come in," said Josh Bilby, Tulsa's water distribution manager, when speaking to media Tuesday morning.
Bilby said four additional crews will be ready to help with repairs starting at 7 a.m. Wednesday.
Residents can track progress on repairing the water breaks using an online tool from the city, which is available both as a list view and a map view.
Some mains will take several hours to fix, while others may take longer as crews are stretched thin.
Bilby said residents can report service line issues via phone by dialing 918-596-9488.
Bigger breaks mean longer waits
Bilby said it's already a struggle to dig up pipes to repair them, as crews need to work around other buried utilities like gas and phone cables.
In addition, some pipes are harder to fix than others.
A pipe that burst along East 4th Street near South Elgin Avenue is a 16-inch line, which Bilby said can take longer to repair. That pipe runs under a more heavily-trafficked road with asphalt in the way, so traffic crews also needed to block off sections of the street.
More breaks than crews
Bilby said there were 11 city crews out working to fix the breaks. However, as of this afternoon, there were more breaks than there were teams to fix them.
"Just bear with us," Bilby said. "It's going to take time for us to get out there and get [the breaks] addressed."
Bilby said the city has a contractor on-call that can provide "four to five additional crews, if we need them."
Aging pipe infrastructure
Bilby said the number of line breaks have occurred both due to the cold and the age of some pipes, many of them dating back to the 1950s.
"The colder water, the denser water, as it reaches some of the older areas of town where we have older infrastructure, that's where we have most of our issues."
Bilby said while the city has worked to replace older water lines, a total infrastructure overhaul would be a substantial task.
"We have a little over 2,300 miles of waterline within the city of Tulsa and it would just be a financial struggle to try to replace all of our aging infrastructure at one time."
