Iqaluit Water Runs.......Out

The one thing that Jacquie and I have come to understand is that every day in Iqaluit seems to bring something new and unique. Apparently sometime over night on Thursday January 12, the water main to the city reservoir broke and the water in the reservoir started to empty. Before the city workers could get the flow stopped almost all of the water in the reservoir had been lost. There was so much water that flowed out onto the ice that a snowmobiler almost drowned when he inadvertantly drove into it.

About once every two weeks, I decide to stop into Tim Hortons to have a coffee and today seemed like a good day to do that. As a side note, Jacquie has a Timmy's coffee everyday partly because the coffee shop is right across from where she works. I want you to know that I'm not jealeous or anything, that's just the way it is. :-)

Anyway, when we went into Timmy's we were told that there was no coffee because there is no water. That is the first time that we even knew there was an issue.

We both went to work. Jacquie's work building was without water, whereby my work building has water trucked on a daily basis so we had water. Shortly after we got to work the GN (Government of Nunavut) closed all Government buildings because of the water problem. We learned that 20 million litres of treated water were lost from the city reservior in only 20 minutes.

Shortly after that the Government issed a statement asking all businesses to close to conserve water and asked the whole city to use water sparingly. I stopped back and picked Jacquie up and she went home. Since our building had water we were given the option to work if we wanted to and I stayed at work to catch up(Jacquie is sure I was just being a "brown noser").

Anyway, I went home for lunch and heard that the GN had issued a boil water advisory for the city. Our home is on the eastern edge of town and for some reason we had water throughout the ordeal.

We were told afterwards that there are two main water sources in town. The main one that services all of downtown, the hospitals and schools was the one affected. However there is a smaller one that services the area of town that we live in.

So it is now Friday evening and we understand that there is still no water downtown and we are not sure when it will be turned on. In the meantime, we are drinking our water from our brita water filter. We have heard from a number of people in the south that have heard of the Iqaluit water issue on CBC.

It really hasn't affect Jacquie and I that much, and it just seems to be an other ordinary day in paradise!!