City Crews Get Icy Reception After Water Leak Freezes Block
(CBS) – Residents of an ice-encased block in a South Side neighborhood say their calls to the city went unanswered until CBS 2 began making inquiries.
A water department crew suddenly showed up, CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez reports.
Everybody knew the cause of all this ice had to be a burst pipe. But whose? The residents wanted answers. They finally got some.
CBS 2 arrived on the 2600 block of east 83rd Street to find a resident digging and cracking the ice that had encased her car.
"This morning it just got stuck," Madeline Reynolds says. "It ain't going nowhere."
She says the water has been running from near a beauty shop since Tuesday, leaving a layer of thick ice up and down the block.
Fannie Fowler says her plumber checked it out and told her it wasn't her pipes. She's been calling the city constantly, she says, because her clients are afraid they'll slip and fall.
After CBS 2 called, a city water crew showed up 30 minutes later.
After finding the source of the leak, crews said it was indeed a city pipe. Heavy equipment would be needed to fix it.
It was a great relief to beauty shop employees, wary after days of escorting clients over slabs of ice. Water department employees helped with that Friday, too.
A spokesman for the water department says the city is swamped with these kinds of calls and the delay getting out here likely means there were worse issues somewhere else.
