UPDATE: City of Kamloops confirming water break is city main

“Anyone driving in that area, do use caution,” he noted. “Our streets crews are going to be monitoring it throughout the night to make sure it’s not icing up. But there was a lot of water.”

The city says it’s difficult to estimate how much water leaked before it was shut off. But Ponderosa Place experienced some flooding and water damage shortly after the burst.

“Our technician arrived and there was almost a foot of water in the residences,” said owner of Concord First General Kamloops Justin McNaney, the restoration company in charge of the clean-up. “What’s going to happen here is we are going to be in a Category 3 loss, which means all the walls will be opened up and we’ll be removing the flooring, and we’ll be getting in equipment to dry out the structure as quickly as possible.”

There is no word from Interior Health on any evacuations from Ponderosa.

Wightman says due to the shutoff, Glenfair Estates, which was not impacted by flooding, is without water until at least the morning when it’s expected crews will have the break fixed.

“We’re working with those folks as well just making sure they have everything they need while we make this repair,” noted Wightman.

City crews will be working for the duration of the night to ensure it is resolved by Friday morning.

EARLIER: A major water leak is impacting a downtown Kamloops block that includes Ponderosa Lodge and the Kamloops courthouse.

The water is flowing rapidly from the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development building behind the courthouse on Columbia Street.

Kamloops Fire Rescue Assistant Fire Chief of Operations Robb Schoular says crews responded to the call just before 5:30 p.m.

“Currently the City of Kamloops is on location, they are working at cleaning up the situation,” he says. “Flooding between Columbia, 3rd and possibly 4th Avenue. We’ve turned it over to public works.”

The city’s utility services manager, Greg Wightman, says several civic operations crews are on scene dealing with a water main break on private property.

“City crews have been able to turn off the water to stop the release of water that was running down through the area there and out onto Columbia Street,” Wightman says, “and we’re working with the private property owner now to get a contractor in there to fix that water main break.”

Now that the water has been shut off repairs are in the hands of affected property owners, but Wightman says the city’s streets crews will be working through the night to mitigate any risk of frozen roads.

“That’s where the city’s going to continue to work on this, obviously there’s a lot of water that did get out onto our streets,” he says. “We’ve got our streets department out there doing ice control and going to be monitoring that throughout the night just to make sure that water, as it does start to freeze up, we’re on top of it and not creating any unsafe streets.”

Wightman says there have been more calls for water main breaks due to the cold snap in the city.

He adds that the city doesn’t have information on the impact to Ponderosa Lodge residents, but advises those residents to stay in contact with property owners.

“Hopefully with our streets crews out there we’re going to have this thing under control overnight and not be impacting traffic in any way,” he says. “Definitely if you don’t need to go down to that area and if you could avoid it, that would help all the crews that are working out there.”

WATCH: Video shows a torrent of water flowing from a BC government building in downtown Kamloops.

WATCH: Water from a nearby BC government building flows toward Ponderosa Lodge.

by James Peters / Ashley Legassic

UPDATE: City of Kamloops confirming water break is city main

Our Community