Attention drivers! There's some traffic trouble messing up the drive home from work.
Eastbound Broadway is closed at Alvernon while city crews repair damage from a water main break.
Normally 40 thousand cars come through Broadway and Alvernon everyday so closing the eastbound lanes is causing a lot of detours.
The water main break soaked the ground so badly the city wants to make sure it can hold the weight of the traffic.
EB Broadway will be closed during afternoon rush from Alvernon to Columbus. Waterline break may have weakened pavement @kgun9 #traffic pic.twitter.com/muqiXnHYv4
— Craig Smith (@csmithKGUNTV) January 6, 2017
The water line broke about ten at night.
John Enemark came home just in time to find deep water on his street.
“There was water running curb deep on Poe and this street and all we could see was there was a lot of activity down there.”
Tucson Water was able to bypass the break and keep water running in the neighborhoods nearby. That was especially good news for place like the Industry Hair Studio, where they use a lot of water...
KGUN9 reporter Craig Smith asked salon owner Greg Yedding: “When you walked in was the first thing you did was check a water faucet?”
Yedding says, “Absolutely. First thing I do is we start coffee and spa water so I wanted to be sure we had coffee for everybody because I knew it was going to be a main issue."
It turned out nature's to blame for the break. A big tree root put enough pressure on the line to break it.
Tucson Water had the pipe repaired about by mid-day but the Tucson Department of Transportation was so worried the water may have undermined the pavement that it decided it needed to close the road longer to make sure the pavement is safe. Late Friday TDOT estimated it would be Saturday afternoon before it could removed the soaked earth, replace it and put down new pavement.
