RICHMOND, VA — A line of cars circled the block in Church Hill Tuesday morning as Richmond and Henrico County residents gathered to receive water amid a city-wide water crisis.
The crisis was triggered by significant issues at Richmond's water treatment plant, which led to a drop in water pressure and a boil water advisory announced Monday afternoon.
“I'll be sharing with some of my elderly neighbors. I've got a couple that I know can't get out, so I'm going to take some water over to them as well,” said resident Michelle Tweedy.
The Church Hill site was one of ten water distribution locations set up to assist neighbors.
Despite the urgent needs, delivery began two hours later than anticipated, attributed to adverse weather and road conditions.
“It could have been, you know, handled a little expeditiously,” Ricky Lee, another Richmond resident, said.
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula explained that the crisis stemmed from a two-fold failure at the water treatment plant after it lost power on Monday morning. Although backup power activated, the IT system's backup did not last long enough, resulting in a system shutdown.
“That basically created a hard reset of the system when the system tried to come back up online, when power was restored,” Avula said. He clarified that while power was restored after just over two hours, the system could not re-establish connections with the servers necessary for operations.
Additionally, a failure in one of the facility's redundancy systems led to some valves being left open, causing flooding in the facility.
“It was the rising of the water level in those wells that you had all this electronic equipment sitting in water, and so fuses were shorted,” Avula added.
Crews worked through the night to address these issues and had at least two pumps running by Tuesday morning to help refill the city’s water reservoir.
However, Avula indicated that even once water service is fully restored, the boil water advisory will remain in effect until at least Wednesday.
“This afternoon we will do our initial sampling and if those samples are negative, we then do a follow-up sample 16 hours after that. Two negative samples allow us to lift the boil water advisory,” he explained. Conversely, if tests return positive, the advisory could extend longer than anticipated.
As production and restoration efforts continue, the mayor urges residents to conserve water to help rebuild pressure in the system.
This is a developing story. Email the CBS 6 Newsroom if you have additional information to share.
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